Trigonometric delights

Trigonometry has always been the black sheep of mathematics. Too advanced to be part of "elementary math," yet too elementary for the higher branches of the profession, it has been looked upon as a glorified form of geometry, complicated by tedious computation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Uniquely positioned as a meeting point between pure and applied mathematics, its rich history shows how different branches of science - among them geography, astronomy, physics, and even music - have influenced one another. In this book, Eli Maor rejects the usual arid descriptions of the sine and cosine functions and their trigonometric relatives. He brings the subject to life in a compelling blend of mathematics, history, and biography. From the "proto-trigonometry" of the Egyptian pyramid builders to Renaissance Europe's quest for more accurate artillery; from the earliest known trigonometric table, carved on a clay tablet by an unknown Babylonian scholar, to Fourier's famous theorem, which finally explained the source of musical harmony, here is a rich tapestry of almost four thousand years of trigonometric history.

First sentence: In 1858 a Scottish lawyer and antiquarian, A. Henry Rhind (1833-1863), on one of his trips to the Nile valley, purchased a document that had been found a few years earlier in the ruins of a small building in Thebes (near present-day Luxor) in Upper Egypt.

Year

1998

Language

English

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Editions

9

Pages

250

ISBN

9780691095417

Data source: Wikidata