The Evolution Of Mathematics As A Scientific Discipline

For the most part, Mathematics remains behind the scenes. We use the end results without really thinking about the complexity underlying the technology in our lives. We never wonder how it came to be so - we only know that is is so and use it because the 'big boys' says so. But the phenomenal advances in technology over the last 100 years parallel the rise of mathematics as an independent scientific discipline.
For so many years (about 4 centuries ago), mathematics was thought of as a discipline encompassing majorly arithmetic, algebra and geometry. It was virtually indistinguishable from science and philosophy. History tells that the above major branches (arithmetic, algebra and geometry) was developed by the ancient Greeks. It was maintained by the Islamic Scholars and was passed on by Christian Monks in the middle ages. Mathematics finally became a field in its own right with the advent and discovery of calculus by the English Mathematician and Physicist, Sir. Isaac Newton and German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the 17th century. Until the 19th century, however, mathematics was used mainly by physicists, chemists and engineers.
In the late 1800s, scientific researchers began probing the limits of observation, investigating the parts of the atom, and the nature of light. Scientists discovered the electron in 1897. They had learned that light consisted of electromagnetic waves in the 1860s, but physicist Albert Einstein showed in 1905 that light could also behave as particles. These discoveries, along with the inquiries into the wavelike nature of matter, led in turn to the rise of theoretical physics and to the creation of complex mathematical models that demonstrated physical laws. Einstein demonstrated the equivalence of mass and energy, summarized by the famous equation  e = mc squared, in his special theory of relativity in 1905. Later, Einstein's general theory of relativity extended special relativity to accelerated systems and showed gravity to be an effect of acceleration. These mathematical models marked the creation of modern physics. Their success in predicting new physical phenomenon, such as black holes and antimatter, led to an explosion of mathematical analysis. Areas in pure mathematics - that is, theory as opposed to applied, or practical mathematics became particularly active.
A similar explosion of activity began in applied mathematics after the invention of the electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) in 1946. Initially built to calculate the trajectory of artillery shells, prediction, and wind-tunnel design. Computers aided the development of efficient numerical methods for solving complex mathematical systems.
"Without mathematics, we might be living in a world with beautiful art, literature and philosophy, but no technology" - Pilant, Micheal, S., B.S., M.S., Ph.D., Professor of mathematics Texas A & M University. (These statements may have been true some 50 years ago but currently, it is a mathematical heresy, a common fallacy as you would soon see). Even the medical advances of the last 50 years might not have occurred, Science and technology; in their turn, have provided many of the problems that motivated progress in mathematics. Such problems include the behaviour of weather systems, the motion of subatomic particles, and the creation of faster and smaller computers that can perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
With all these disciplines in which mathematics has contributed as a 'soul mate' to make simple, a problem of great difficulty, no wonder it is termed 'The Language of Science'.