Ben B. reviewed on 4/27/2010 + 7 more book reviews

It's not just "great theorems," it's about all the great discoveries. It's an excellent book on history/biography of mathematics and mathematicians. I give it really high marks. It covers Aristotle, Pythagoras and Erasthenes to Newton and Leibniz to Godel, and everyone you've heard of in between and their exact contributions to mathematics (or their most important contributions for the more prolific contributors), at detail I've not seen elsewhere, such as showing exactly how various infinite series for Pi were derived. Okay, there was about four pages on the life of some guy who developed the cubic equation formula, and these pages had nothing about math, but are about the hard, terrible, bad-luck life he lived. But that's only one percent of the book, and I've learned a lot more about math (especially who did what and how) than a lot of other books on math put together. Wish I had read something like this in college or high school.

Back to all reviews by this member
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details