Excerpt:
One of the commonest questions which the readers of this archive ask is: Who discovered zero? Why then have we not written an article on zero as one of the first in the archive? The reason is basically because of the difficulty of answering the question in a satisfactory form. If someone had come up with the concept of zero which everyone then saw as a brilliant innovation to enter mathematics from that time on, the question would have a satisfactory answer even if we did not know which genius invented it. The historical record, however, shows quite a different path towards the concept. Zero makes shadowy appearances only to vanish again almost as if mathematicians were searching for it yet did not recognise its fundamental significance even when they saw it.
Annotation:
The MacTutor Archive hosts thousands of biographical sketches of important mathematicians. Many of the biographies include links to documents and other materials related to mathematicans. Searches can be performed alphabetically or chronologically. In addition to the biographies, the site also includes a number of essays that are grouped by culture and topic. Thus the chronology of Pi or the history of zero can be found under "Arab Mathematics" and "Number Theory" among other categories. This is one of the most-linked to history of science sites on the web because it contains so much information.