~ Early Web Links ~

Created by Hiroshi Kotera, this site documents Sangaku, the beautiful geometric theorems that Japanese scholars of all social classes inscribed on wooden tablets and dedicated to shrines and temples during the Edo period. It offers images of surviving Sangaku tablets and serves as a rare English-language window into this uniquely Japanese mathematical tradition dating back to 1996.

Dr Ron Knott's comprehensive mathematics resource, hosted by Surrey University since 1996, covers Fibonacci numbers, the golden ratio, and their appearances in nature, art, geometry, architecture, and music. Packed with interactive calculators, puzzles, investigations, and dozens of linked pages exploring everything from Lucas sequences to phyllotaxis, this is one of the oldest and most thorough maths sites on the web.

Mathematrix, created by Lee Stemkoski at Adelphi University, explores the playful and lesser-known side of mathematics through topics like polyominoes, Rubik's Cube, fractals, Conway's Game of Life, and higher dimensions. Accessible to curious minds at any level, the site blends mathematical art, humor, poetry, and hands-on puzzles to make recreational math genuinely entertaining.

The Mathematics Genealogy Project is a massive academic database tracking the doctoral advisor lineages of mathematicians worldwide, with over 337,000 records linking students to their advisors across generations. Hosted by NDSU in association with the American Mathematical Society, it lets you trace the intellectual ancestry of virtually any mathematician back through history.

Iden's personal corner of the web highlights their love of mathematics, featuring a playful 'Web Pi' page and a collection of 88x31 buttons alongside a blog and micro-log. The site has a charming lo-fi aesthetic with CC0-licensed content and participates in the No AI Webring.

Jeff Miller's meticulously researched reference page tracks the earliest known uses of mathematical terminology, tracing when and where specific math words first appeared in historical texts. This is a unique etymological resource for mathematicians, historians, and anyone curious about the origins of the language of mathematics.

Christian Plesner Hansen's technical blog dives deep into the legendary fast inverse square root hack and its magic constant 0x5f3759df, tracing the algorithm's surprising history from Ardent Computer in the 1980s through SGI, 3dfx, and Quake III Arena. The post rigorously explains the underlying floating-point bit manipulation, generalizes the technique to arbitrary powers, and includes graphs and mathematical derivations that illuminate why this 'evil' hack actually works.

Dale Mellor is a scientific computer programmer, mathematician, and physicist who writes accessible math explainers like his 'Baby Steps for Adults' series alongside posts about science fiction, Star Trek, fine art, and daily life. The blog covers a genuinely eclectic range of intellectual interests, with mathematics and computing forming the clear backbone of the content.

Shtetl-Optimized is the long-running blog of Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist and quantum computing researcher, where he dives deep into complexity theory, quantum computing misconceptions, AI, and education policy. Known for its intellectual rigor and wit, it attracts readers from academia and beyond who enjoy substantive takes on math, physics, and the occasional culture-war skirmish in gifted education.

Kenneth Falconer is a Regius Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews whose personal academic page covers his pioneering work in fractal geometry, geometric measure theory, and multifractal analysis. Visitors will find links to his books and preprints, fractal movie resources, maths poems, and even a note about his impressive record completing 36 LDWA hundred-mile walks.