MathsNet is a suite of independent mathematics educational sites created by Bryan Dye.
Bryan was a mathematics teacher of nearly 30 years experience in state schools and based in Norwich, Norfolk UK.
Bryan Dye began writing educational materials in about 1988, and was producer/editor of "Mathematics In Norfolk" magazine - Secondary Edition, from 1988 to 1993. He wrote numerous articles for MicroMath magazine, including "Pyxidium - A Problem Children Are Better At Than Teachers", "Spirals", "Introducing Logo", "Basketball data", "Self-describing numbers", "Opinion - Mathematics in the Computer Room", "1,2,3,4 - four digits that dwarfed the universe", "What's the good of email?" and "Numbers in words". Besides occasional articles in the TES, he wrote the "WebWatch" column in Micromath, ATM, from Spring 1998 onwards.
Published books include "Investigations With Omnigraph" and "A-level Investigations With Omnigraph", SPA, Spring 1992. "Numerator Workcards", Longman Logotron, Autumn 1992. "Mathematics Through Win-Logo", Longman Logotron, Autumn 1995. "Maths Through Spreadsheets, Books 1 and 2", SPA, 1997
MathsNet started life on a PC in the back sitting room of Bryan's home as a small idea to develop previously written ICT resources. The site first went online as www.mathsnet.net on 4 July 1996. In May 1997, the site moved to space freely provided by Anglia Multimedia, the educational department within Anglia TV at the time.
Visitors to the site increased hugely, and to accommodate all these visitors, and burgeoning computer paraphenalia and guitars, MathsNet moved home from the back sitting room up two flights of stairs to the newly constructed loft and a view over the rooftops towards central Norwich.
In July 2000, MathsNet won first prize for its Transformations pages in the Mathplets 2000 competition sponsored by computer company Sun (now part of Oracle) and organised by European Schoolnet: "The jury has appreciated this large set of web pages where one will be instructed about geometric transformations. From ICT point of view, working with them is very easy, in spite of the fact that mathematics in the highest levels is not so easy! Wholly interactive, you get an immediate response on what you have done. It constitutes a superior example of use of a preexisting environments in building good didactic materials."
During this time Bryan was also working with the team at Anglia Multimedia's sister company, AngliaCampus, in a role as Maths consultant to their increasing maths coverage on their own site.
In December 2000, MathsNet moved virtual home again to hosting provided by AngliaCampus and the material on the site expanded greatly. In early 2001, Granada took over Anglia, and MathsNet's virtual home moved to Granada Learning's own site until Granada took the short-sighted decision to close down both Anglia Multimedia and AngliaCampus.
In 2004 the subscription-based GCSE site was created initially in conjunction with another Norfolk-based company, Advisory Matters. In 2007, Bryan set up the A-Level site which, for a while, ran independently of the GCSE site until 2009 when Bryan took back full control of the GCSE site and all the MathsNet sites moved to their own dedicated hosting in order to accommodate growing usage.
Also during that time the mathsnet.com domain name was made available by its previous owners. Initially, that domain was used by Bryan to showcase his own activities. However, after a short illness, Bryan passed away in early 2012. The MathsNet sites are now run in conjunction with his family by a small team of people, many of whom are proud to have known or worked with Bryan over the years.
In 2015 this site was moved onto the older mathsnet.net domain name in order to free up the mathsnet.com domain which became used for the main interactive content. Also, MathsNet reached India with the addition of the CBSE syllabi. The Universal syllabus was also created in order to cater for teachers and students whose curriculum doesn't follow one of the existing syllabi.
In early 2016 the previously separate GCSE site was fully merged with the A-Level site so that everything now comes under one banner and moving between GCSE and any of the others is much simpler. We also added a much more comprehensive help system and removed many syllabus restrictions and non-GCSE-only users can now switch to any other syllabus available on the site without restriction.
2017 saw an expansion of new syllabi, including several new GCSE-level ones.
2022 sees the continuation of revisions to match changes to the various syllabi.