God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History |
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Stephen Hawking
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Pages: 1376 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0762430044
Pub: Running Press Book Publishers
Pub date: 2007-09-18
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 182550
Reader Reviews:
Useful but big omissions (1/2 people found this helpful)
This book has a useful collection of important papers. A discussion about whether this or that paper should have been excluded/included would go on for ever. Even so it is really rather startling that the collection does not include a single paper by a non-European mathematician. Surely this cannot be justified.
Just a Collection of Papers (11/12 people found this helpful)
A few days after buying this book I think I might have been suckered into it with the metallic cover and Stephen Hawkings name. Well now I realise that its really just a collection of papers (by some of the famous mathematicians) and not even a commentary. Sure there is a nice little introduction to each sections author.
But perhaps part of what we are paying for is the fact someone has selected what they considered to be the important works.
I was hoping for a bit more in the way of commentary/explanation. Saying that the sections I was interested in where Cauchy/Fourier/Riemann
Maybe its too early to tell I may need to spend more time reading it.
A book I did like was called "A History of Mathematics" by Boyers et al. A book that is available very cheaply now on Amazon (check out the review) and less formidable.
Beautiful book, excellent value (11/11 people found this helpful)
The vast majority of this book is a collection of fascinating historically important mathematical papers, arranged in chronological order from Euclid to Turing. Each of the 17 mathematicians covered is given half-a-dozen pages of background, which is well written and informative, but it is the papers and essays themselves - which include commentary in the form of footnotes in very small print - that is the best part. These are generally in the public domain anyway, but the printing and layout is top-quality. Obviously much of the contents will only be understandable with some previous maths experience, and the papers don't necessarily build on each other, but if maths is at all interesting to you...
This book could have been even better with the addition of an index and cross-references, but it is outstanding value and has such depth I have to give it five stars.
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Books -> Subjects -> Biography -> Science, Mathematics & Technology -> Science
Books -> Subjects -> Biography -> Science, Mathematics & Technology -> General AAS
Books -> Subjects -> Science & Nature -> Mathematics -> History of Mathematics
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