The harmonic series: Historical and mathematical aspects (Q1976820)

This article essentially contains the contents of several talks which the author has given at seminars on mathematical education. The author pursues how our knowledge on the harmonic series has developed during the period from 1350 to 1750. The divergence of the harmonic series was discovered very early in medieval mathematics by Oresme around 1350. More detailed investigations on the growth of its partial sums require analytic methods. Therefore, further progress was achieved not until by Jakob and Johann Bernoulli, Euler and others. Euler's examinations of the subject led to a numerical calculation of Euler's constant \(\gamma\) to 16 decimal places.