The general principles by which the editors and authors of the present edition have been guided were explained in the preface to the first volume of Mathemat ics of the 19th Century, which contains chapters on the history of mathematical logic, algebra, number theory, and probability theory (Nauka, Moscow 1978; En glish translation by Birkhiiuser Verlag, Basel-Boston-Berlin 1992). Circumstances beyond the control of the editors necessitated certain changes in the sequence of historical exposition of individual disciplines. The second volume contains two chapters: history of geometry and history of analytic function theory (including elliptic and Abelian functions); the size of the two chapters naturally entailed di viding them into sections. The history of differential and integral calculus, as well as computational mathematics, which we had planned to include in the second volume, will form part of the third volume. We remind our readers that the appendix of each volume contains a list of the most important literature and an index of names. The names of journals are given in abbreviated form and the volume and year of publication are indicated; if the actual year of publication differs from the nominal year, the latter is given in parentheses. The book History of Mathematics from Ancient Times to the Early Nineteenth Century [in Russian], which was published in the years 1970-1972, is cited in abbreviated form as HM (with volume and page number indicated). The first volume of the present series is cited as Bk. 1 (with page numbers).
Dr. Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, Ph.D. (Moscow State University, 1929; Russian: Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров) was a Soviet mathematician and professor at the Moscow State University where he became the first chairman of the department of probability theory two years after the 1933 publication of his book which laid the modern axiomatic foundations of the field. He was a Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and winner of many awards, including the Stalin Prize (1941), the Lenin Prize (1965), the Wolf Prize (1980), and the Lobachevsky Prize (1986).