"The Mathematics of the Renaissance... Mathematicians had barely assimilated the knowledge obtained from the Arabs, including their translations of Greek writers, when the refugees who escaped from Constantinople after the fall of the eastern empire brought the original works and the traditions of Greek science into Italy. Thus by the middle of the fifteenth century the chief results of Greek and Arabian mathematics were accessible to European students. The invention of printing about that time rendered the dissemination of discoveries comparatively easy. ...[W]hen a mediaeval writer "published" ... the results were known to only a few of his contemporaries. This had not been the case in classical times for... until the fourth century of our era Alexandria was the... centre for the reception and dissemination of new works and discoveries. In mediaeval Europe... there was no common centre through which men of science could communicate with one another, and to this cause the slow and fitful development of mediaeval mathematics may be partly ascribed. The last two centuries of this period... described as the renaissance, were distinguished by great mental activity in all branches of learning. The creation of a fresh group of universities... testify to the... desire for knowledge. The discovery of America in 1492 and the discussions that preceded the Reformation flooded Europe with new ideas... ut the advance in mathematics was at least as well marked as that in literature and... politics. During the first part of this time the attention of mathematicians was to a large extent concentrated on syncopated algebra and trigonometry."