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This guide highlights the top tools for your research in MATH 380W. If you can't find what you need, please contact Jenna Thomson at or Ask a librarian.
Tips for starting out
Browse research guides
These are a good place to start with any subject you're researching. Go to the Math research guide for general Math resources and also check out the research guides for History and Primary Sources.
Assignment calculator
A great time management tool to help you break down your assignments into a series of manageable steps.
Student Learning Commons
Provides consultations and tools to help with academic writing, learning, and study strategies, including developing your outline, writing your paper, and reading comprehension.
Understanding and avoiding plagiarism
Test your knowledge of what plagiarism is and learn several techniques for avoiding it.
Starting with background info
Beginning your research with an encyclopedia article or biography can help establish the basics of your topic. Encyclopedias and biographies have information on key concepts and each article will have a reference list that can point you to additional sources.
Biographies
Complete dictionary of scientific biography
Provides information on the history of science through articles on the professional lives of scientists.
Notable women in mathematics : a biographical dictionary [print]
Biographical essays on women from around the world who have made significant contributions to mathematics.
American National Biography
This database focuses on biographies of significant, influential or notorious figures from American history
Biographical Memoirs
This website provides biographic articles of National Academy of Sciences members.
Bibliographies
The history of mathematics from antiquity to the present : a selective annotated bibliography [print]
An annotated bibliography of the history of mathematics with topics such as Egyptian mathematics.
Mathematics through history : a resource guide [print]
Encyclopedias
Historical encyclopedia of natural and mathematical sciences [online]
A comprehensive encyclopedia of science and mathematics.
Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences: Volume 1 [online or print] and Volume 2 [online]
An encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of mathematics with cultural context.
CRC concise encyclopedia of mathematics [print]
A collection of brief but detailed summaries of mathematical definitions, formulas, figures, tabulations, and references.
Finding books
You can search the library catalogue for books.
Search by keyword. Use keyword searches with AND to combine your concepts and OR to combine synonyms. For more details on how to use AND and OR in your search, take a look at our Power searching and Boolean searching guide. Try one of these examples:
- Archimedes AND (mechanics OR hydrostatics)
- Fourier AND history
- Pascal probability AND history
- pi AND history
- "sophie germain"
For more information on how to search using the library catalogue, take a look at the Library Catalogue search guide!
Finding journal articles
Think broadly; It's helpful to consider what fields are spanned by your research question, and therefore what databases may contain useful information. In addition to math databases, you might also want to consider searching history, science, or women's studies databases.
Some of these are index databases, which means the full-text of the article isn't included in the database. You'll notice "Get@SFU" buttons that will point you to the SFU Library's copy of the article. You can also search the library catalogue for articles using a keyword search.
Suggested databases:
MathSciNet
Search for articles about the history of mathematics.
Academic Search Complete
Covers all academic disciplines, including astronomy, physics, math, science and history.
Historical Abstracts
Covers world history since 1450 except for the United States and Canada.
JSTOR
Covers general science, history, mathematics. An emphasis on arts, humanities and social sciences.
Google Scholar
Search for scholarly articles using Google.
Finding a known article. If you’re trying to find an article using a citation, try using the citation to find the article by either searching the library catalogue, or using the “drill down” method.
If neither of the above works, request the item from another library.
Don't hesitate to use this if the SFU Library does not have an item you need! It generally takes 3-14 days for an item to arrive (but it's often closer to 3). Feel free to get in touch with Jenna Thomson (jennat@sfu.ca) if you need a hand!
Finding other source types
A common error is to restrict your searching to only certain formats (e.g. articles, books) when other source types might be equally useful to your research (e.g. institute reports, university archives).
Check out these websites:
MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Biographical and historical articles; provided by the University of St. Andrews.
Historical Mathematics Monographs
A digital collection of historical math books; provided by Cornell University.
Math Association of America
A collection of biographical articles; provided by the Math Association of America..
Trinity College -- The History of Mathematics
A collection of biographies; provided by Trinity College.
British Society for the History of Mathematics
The British Society for the History of Mathematics “promotes and encourages research into the history of mathematics and the dissemination of the results of that research.”
Historical Mathematics Collection
A collection of digitized books; provided by the University of Michigan.
The Galileo Project
Biographies of scientists from the 16th and 17th centuries; provided by Rice University.
Citing your sources
To cite your sources using Chicago style, try one of these guides:
For using LaTeX and BibTeX, check out the Math citing and writing guide for guides and handbooks!