Excerpt:
Available here are accounts of the lives and works of seventeenth and eighteenth century mathematicians (and some other scientists), adapted from A Short Account of the History of Mathematics by W. W. Rouse Ball (4th Edition, 1908).
The ordering of the mathematicians and scientists below is approximately chronological. A separate index is provided which lists these people in alphabetical order.
Annotation:
This site is an online adaptation of the fourth edition of W. W. Rouse Ball's A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, published in 1908.
The site lists chronologically or alphabetically more than 80 mathematicians from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. These entries include some biographical information as well as descriptions of important contributions to the science. Many of the entries are quite long and filled with discussions of mathematical operations and theories, so the site may not be as useful to someone who is not well-versed in this field. However, the site is a great resource for tying together contemporaries, and for finding links between the lives and work of various mathematicians. Since the source of the information is old (1908), the text itself could be viewed as a primary source as well, showing the early twentieth-century attitude toward math and science. The site is entirely text except for a limited number of images that are entirely formulas and proofs.