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Loading... A History of Mathematics (1968)by Carl B. Boyer, Carl B. Boyer
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book reminds me of E.T. Bell's book, Men of Mathematics. It contains the history of mathematical discoveries as they are known to scholars. For instance, it shows that certain theorems were known to the oriental nations like China and India, and that a lot of things had to be rediscovered after the whole rigmarole with the fall of empires and nations and the destruction of ancient repositories of knowledge. It starts with counting and goes on through the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans. After the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, we follow mathematical thought to India, China and Arabia. Throughout the book, it covers quadratics and how the ancients thought of them and goes on through the founding of Calculus and Analysis. The Giants are all covered, with Euler and Gauss each getting their own chapters. Basically, with every big name or thought in mathematics, the book is there, offering an opinion on stuff. Most of the stuff is priority of discovery, which is a huge thing to mathematicians. This book is really interesting, but it takes a while for me to read the notation. I really wish I was better at that, but I am working on it. no reviews | add a review
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References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (38)The updated new edition of the classic and comprehensive guide to the history of mathematics For more than forty years, A History of Mathematics has been the reference of choice for those looking to learn about the fascinating history of humankind's relationship with numbers, shapes, and patterns. This revised edition features up-to-date coverage of topics such as Fermat's Last Theorem and the Poincaré Conjecture, in addition to recent advances in areas such as finite group theory and computer-aided proofs. Distills thousands of years of mathematics into a single, approachable volume Covers mathematical discoveries, concepts, and thinkers, from Ancient Egypt to the present Includes up-to-date references and an extensive chronological table of mathematical and general historical developments. Whether you're interested in the age of Plato and Aristotle or Poincaré and Hilbert, whether you want to know more about the Pythagorean theorem or the golden mean, A History of Mathematics is an essential reference that will help you explore the incredible history of mathematics and the men and women who created it. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)510.9Natural sciences and mathematics Mathematics General Mathematics Biography And HistoryLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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"Another paper of great influence in the trend to abstraction was Ernst Steinitz's work on the algebraic theory of fields, which appeared in the winter of 1909-1910 and had been motivated by Kurt Hensel's work on p-adic fields."
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"Heesch thought that the four-color conjecture could be solved by considering a set of around 8,900 configurations."
I won't say that the book was never interesting [did you know that our "Arabic numbers" are really Indian inspired? Ever since my visit to Egypt many years ago I wondered why their numbers were different from ours.] Anyway, I have enough Science Fiction background that I recognized most of the buzz-words: Riemann fields, topology, tensors, pseudosphere(?), Hermitian matrices....
If I were an advanced student of Mathematics I would definitely give this book a 5-star rating. But, given that I actually was able to plow through the entire book, and comprehended so little, tells even me that the author was not intrinsically boring. There's a phenomenal amount of information in this book; it's just a shame that I understood so little of it. However, I may have been inspired to see if I can find an "advanced math for dummies" book. Just what is "non Euclidean geometry"?