The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive is a website containing information that pertains to the lives of mathematicians that helped develop the field, as well as other historical facts about mathematics. Each day is dedicated to a different mathematician, and the organization of the biography page makes it easy to find any given mathematician’s biographical information. I especially like the section of famous curves and the different types and background information about each.
The Archive contains biographies of over 2,800 mathematicians, organized chronologically by name and date, as well as a map with links to each showing their nationalities. Each biography varies in length; usually they are at least a few paragraphs long. Along with each biography is a small list of sources from which the content is drawn. A help page is provided, but it only provides a more detailed description of what each of the main navigation link pages holds, not any real help on actually using the site itself.
The website was created in 1994 and the design shows it. The background is nothing but pictures (presumably of mathematicians), which is very busy and distracting. Nothing about the website is consistent with websites today, which makes using it very disconcerting. The navigation is on the bottom of each page and there is no top logo with a link back to the main page. Some links open in a new window, some in a new tab and some in the same space; there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. There is not even a consistent colour scheme or design. Each page looks like it could be part of a separate website. Nothing about this website looks modern or professional.
The site was created and is maintained by John O’Connor and Edmund Robertson, both retired math teachers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. More information about their personal lives is included on the site than their professional lives, so how much actual knowledge they have about the subject is in doubt. I would recommend double checking all facts before trusting the site one hundred per cent.
For me, the worst part of the website was information I found on the frequently asked questions page. The FAQ page says that they do not own the copyright for most of the images, and while most are probably in the public domain, you can use them since you should not encounter any problems. I find this to not be particularly ethical – just because you probably would not get into trouble, does not mean you should use someone else’s image without their permission.
Overall, I would not recommend this website to anyone. It contains a lot of information, but the site itself maintains an unprofessional appearance, and I find it hard to trust a website that does not provide citations for the images that it uses. It could possibly be a good starting website for a history of mathematics project, but I would only use it as a springboard to find further sources. This is a website that is in sore need of a major update.
