A History of Mathematical Notations is a book on the history of mathematics and of mathematical notation. It was written by Swiss-American historian of mathematics Florian Cajori (1859–1930), and originally published as a two-volume set by the Open Court Publishing Company in 1928 and 1929, with the subtitles Volume I: Notations in Elementary Mathematics (1928) and Volume II: Notations Mainly in Higher Mathematics (1929).[1] Although Open Court republished it in a second edition in 1974, it was unchanged from the first edition.[2] In 1993, it was published as an 820-page single volume edition by Dover Publications, with its original pagination unchanged.[1]
The Basic Library List Committee of the Mathematical Association of America has listed this book as essential for inclusion in undergraduate mathematics libraries.[1] It was already described as long-awaited at the time of its publication,[3] and by 2013, when the Dover edition was reviewed by Fernando Q. Gouvêa, he wrote that it was "one of those books so well known that it doesn’t need a review".[1] However, some of its claims on the history of the notations it describes have been subsumed by more recent research, and its coverage of modern mathematics is limited, so it should be used with care as a reference.[1][2]