Table of mathematical symbols by introduction date

| horizontal bar for division

| 14th century (approx.)

| Nicole Oresme{{Cite book |last=Cajori |first=Florian |title=A History of Mathematical Notations |publisher=Dover Publications |year=1993 |location=Mineola, New York}}

| plus sign

| 1360 (approx.), abbreviation for Latin et resembling the plus sign

| Nicole Oresme

| minus sign

| 1489 (first appearance of minus sign, and also first appearance of plus sign in print)

| Johannes Widmann

| radical symbol (for square root)

| 1525 (without the vinculum above the radicand)

| Christoff Rudolff

| rowspan=2| parentheses (for precedence grouping)

| 1544 (in handwritten notes)

| Michael Stifel

| Niccolò Tartaglia

| equals sign

| 1557

| Robert Recorde

| decimal separator

| 1593

| Christopher Clavius

| multiplication sign

| 1618

| rowspan=3| William Oughtred

| plus–minus sign

| rowspan=2| 1628

| proportion sign

| radical symbol (for nth root)

| 1629

| Albert Girard

| strict inequality signs (less-than sign and greater-than sign)

| 1631

| Thomas Harriot

| rowspan=2| superscript notation (for exponentiation)

| 1636 (using Roman numerals as superscripts)

| James Hume

| René Descartes (La Géométrie)

| Use of the letter x for an independent variable or unknown value. See History of algebra: The symbol x.

| 1637{{Citation

| first=Carl B.

| last=Boyer

| author-link=Carl Benjamin Boyer

| title=A History of Mathematics

| edition=Second

| publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

| year=1991

| isbn=978-0-471-54397-8

| url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema00boye

}}

| René Descartes (La Géométrie)

| radical symbol (for square root)

| style=border-bottom:none| 1637 (with the vinculum above the radicand)

| René Descartes (La Géométrie)

| percent sign

| 1650 (approx.)

| unknown

| infinity sign

| 1655

| John Wallis

| division sign (a repurposed obelus variant)

| 1659

| Johann Rahn

| rowspan=2| unstrict inequality signs (less-than or equals to sign and greater-than or equals to sign)

| 1670 (with the horizontal bar over the inequality sign, rather than below it)

| John Wallis

| Pierre Bouguer

| differential sign

| rowspan=2| 1675

| rowspan=4| Gottfried Leibniz

| integral sign

| colon (for division)

| 1684 (deriving from use of colon to denote fractions, dating back to 1633)

| middle dot (for multiplication)

| 1698 (perhaps deriving from a much earlier use of middle dot to separate juxtaposed numbers)

| division slash (a.k.a. solidus)

| 1718 (deriving from horizontal fraction bar, invented by Abu Bakr al-Hassar in the 12th century)

| Thomas Twining

| inequality sign (not equal to)

| unknown

| rowspan=3| Leonhard Euler

| prime symbol (for derivative)

| 1748

| summation symbol

| 1755

| proportionality sign

| 1768

| William Emerson

| partial differential sign (a.k.a. curly d or Jacobi's delta)

| 1770

| Marquis de Condorcet

| identity sign (for congruence relation)

| 1801 (first appearance in print; used previously in personal writings of Gauss)

| rowspan=2| Carl Friedrich Gauss

| integral part (a.k.a. floor)

| 1808

| factorial

| 1808

| Christian Kramp

| product symbol

| 1812

| Carl Friedrich Gauss

| rowspan=2| set inclusion signs (subset of, superset of)

| 1817

| Joseph Gergonne

| Ernst Schröder

| absolute value notation

| 1841

| Karl Weierstrass

| 1841

| rowspan=2| Arthur Cayley

| matrix notation

| 1843{{cite web|title=Earliest Uses of Symbols for Matrices and Vectors|url=http://jeff560.tripod.com/matrices.html|website=jeff560.tripod.com|accessdate=18 December 2016}}

| nabla symbol (for vector differential)

| 1846 (previously used by Hamilton as a general-purpose operator sign)

| William Rowan Hamilton

| intersection

union

| 1888

| Giuseppe Peano

| aleph symbol (for transfinite cardinal numbers)

| 1893

| Georg Cantor

| membership sign (is an element of)

| 1894

| Giuseppe Peano

| Big O Notation

| 1894

| Paul Bachmann

| braces, a.k.a. curly brackets (for set notation)

| 1895

| Georg Cantor

| Blackboard bold capital N (for natural numbers set)

| rowspan=2| 1895

| rowspan=3|Giuseppe Peano

| Blackboard bold capital Q (for rational numbers set)

| existential quantifier (there exists)

| 1897

| middle dot (for dot product)

| rowspan=2| 1902

| rowspan=2| J. Willard Gibbs

| multiplication sign (for cross product)

| logical disjunction (a.k.a. OR)

| 1906

| Bertrand Russell

| rowspan=2| matrix notation

| 1909

| Maxime Bôcher

| 1909

| Gerhard Kowalewski

| contour integral sign

| 1917

| Arnold Sommerfeld

| Blackboard bold capital Z (for integer numbers set)

| 1930

| Edmund Landau

| universal quantifier (for all)

| 1935

| Gerhard Gentzen

| rowspan=2| arrow (for function notation)

| 1936 (to denote images of specific elements)

| Øystein Ore

| Witold Hurewicz

| empty set sign

| 1939

| André Weil / Nicolas Bourbaki{{citation|title=The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician|first=André|last=Weil|author-link=André Weil|publisher=Springer|year=1992|isbn=9783764326500|page=114|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=73REHmJ9JNUC&pg=PA114}}.

| Blackboard bold capital C (for complex numbers set)

| 1939

| Nathan Jacobson

| end of proof sign (a.k.a. tombstone)

| 1950{{Cite book

| last = Halmos

| first = Paul

| year = 1950

| title = Measure Theory

| publisher = Van Nostrand

| location = New York

| quote = The symbol ∎ is used throughout the entire book in place of such phrases as "Q.E.D." or "This completes the proof of the theorem" to signal the end of a proof.

| pages = vi

}}

| Paul Halmos

| greatest integer ≤{{thin space}}x (a.k.a. floor)

smallest integer ≥{{thin space}}x (a.k.a. ceiling)

| 1962{{citation|author=Kenneth E. Iverson|author-link=Kenneth E. Iverson|title=A Programming Language|date=1962|publisher=Wiley|url=http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APL.htm|accessdate=20 April 2016}}

| Kenneth E. Iverson