Of men and numbers

When mathematics itself amy be a formidable subject for many, the lives and accomplishments of history's greatest mathematicians --from Pythagoras to Cantor --offer fascinating reading. In this delightful and informative recounting, for example we learn Pasacal's life was abruptly changed by a family of fanatical bonesetters, how Descartes was influenced by three dreams and how the scholarly Swiss Leonhard Euler(whose famous conjecture was finally disproved in 1959, after 177 years) almost ended up in Russian navy. Here, too Cardano, the gambler who became the sizteenth century's most fashionable doctor: Archimedes, Newton and Gauss, often considered the three greatest mathematicians of all times; Lobatchevsky, inventor of non-Euclidean geometry ; and the tragic Galois, a founder of modern higher algebra. In addition to a wealth of interesting and informative anecdotes, presented in a delightfully conversational style, the author offers lucid, accessible explanations of these thinker's invaluable contributions to the edifice of modern mathematical thought and to man's understanding of himself and his universe.

First sentence: The names of the men who pioneered in mathematics are lost in the same ancient mists that obscure all of mankind's early history. There are no records of the cavemen who, eons ago, first conceived the idea of counting: 1,2,3,4-many. As language evolved, so did counting and very simple arithmetic. Men added 2 arrows to 3 arrows and got 5. Often several sets of numbers were used, depending on ht obj

Year

1961

Language

English

Publisher

Indy Pub

Editions

3

Pages

256

ISBN

9781088152348

Data source: Wikidata