section_path: Heuristic mathematics and experimental mathematics
section_name: Heuristic mathematics and experimental mathematics
paragraph_text: Heuristic mathematics and experimental mathematics
  
  While early mathematicians such as Eudoxus of Cnidus did not use proofs, from Euclid to the foundational mathematics developments of the late 19th and 20th centuries, proofs were an essential part of mathematics. With the increase in computing power in the 1960s, significant work began to be done investigating mathematical objects beyond the proof-theorem framework, in experimental mathematics. Early pioneers of these methods intended the work ultimately to be resolved into a classical proof-theorem framework, e.g. the early development of fractal geometry, which was ultimately so resolved.