God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History

Having read the "Brief History of Time" I purchased this out of interest.

My 'A' levels include mathematics and physics and I have a degree in engineering and am well read in philosophy. This book is a completely different animal to the "Brief History of Time" which is an interesting and fairly straightforward read. This is good for reference and I understood some large chunks of it but I think that one would have to devote a considerable amount of one's time in order understand it fully. Not for the innumerate, the lazy or the intellectually challenged to be sure.

There are some books in my collection by people such as e.g. Kant, James Joyce, Newton and so on that are quite formidable to read.

One has to decide whether one wants to spend months of one's life reading just one book or whether the opportunity cost (to use a term taken from economics) of doing so is simply too high.

I decided to give most of this book a miss as I have many other books to read that have higher priority.

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 (12/13 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.

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History

Stephen Hawking

Reader Reviews:

Good but very hard (0/0 people found this helpful)

Useful but big omissions (1/2 people found this helpful)

Just a Collection of Papers (12/13 people found this helpful)

Beautiful book, excellent value (11/11 people found this helpful)

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