Jane Muir

1191. Of Men and Numbers, by Jane Muir (read 22 Oct 1972) This is a collection of the lives of 12 great mathematicians and I found it absorbing though I never took a math course after high school. The 12: Pythagorus, Euclid, Archimedes, Girolamo Cardano ((1501-1576) (gave first clear picture of negative numbers, first recognized existence of negative roots, and made the first note of imaginary numbers); Descartes; Pascal; Isaac Newton; Leonhard Euler, Carl Friedrich Gauss (1770-1855) (one of show more the greatest mathematicians), Nicholas Lobatchevsky (1793-1856), Evaristo Galois, Georg Cantor (1845-1918) I enjoyed this book a lot and if you don't recognize any name your friendly encyclopedia (Google) will enlighten you, I'm sure. (This is before Wikipedia but now you should use Wikipedia, of course.) show less

Interesting to learn about some famous mathematicians but also other characters from history they interacted with.