Significant figures : the lives and work of great mathematicians / Ian Stewart.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stewart, Ian, 1945- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematicians--Biography.

Mathematicians.

MATHEMATICS / History & Philosophy.

MATHEMATICS / Essays.

Local Subjects:

MATHEMATICS / History & Philosophy.

MATHEMATICS / Essays.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

303 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Edition:

First US edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Basic Books, 2017.

Summary:

A celebrated mathematician traces the history of math through the lives and work of twenty-five pioneering mathematicians. In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart introduces the visionaries of mathematics throughout history. Delving into the lives of twenty-five great mathematicians, Stewart examines the roles they played in creating, inventing, and discovering the mathematics we use today. Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics from Archimedes to Benoit Mandelbrot, and learn about those too often left out of the cannon, such as Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-850), the creator of algebra, and Augusta Ada King (1815-1852), Countess of Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer. Tracing the evolution of mathematics over the course of two millennia, Significant Figures will educate and delight aspiring mathematicians and experts alike.

Contents:

Do not disturb my circles : Archimedes

Master of the Way : Liu Hui

Dixit algorismi : Muhammad al-Khwarizmi

Innovator of the infinite : Madhava of Sangamagrama

The gambling astrologer : Girolamo Cardano

The last theorem : Pierre de Fermat

System of the world : Isaac Newton

Master of us all : Leonhard Euler

The heat operator : Joseph Fourier

Invisible scaffolding : Carl Friedrich Gauss

Bending the rules : Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky

Radicals and revolutionaries : Évariste Galois

Enchantress of a number : Augusta Ada King

The laws of thought : George Boole

Musician of the primes : Bernhard Riemann

Cardinal of the continuum : Georg Cantor

The first great lady : Sofia Kovalevskaia

Ideas rose in crowds : Henri Poincaré

We must know, we shall know : David Hilbert

Overthrowing academic order : Emmy Noether

The formula man : Srinivasa Ramanujan

Incomplete and undecidable : Kurt Gödel

The machine stops : Alan Turing

Father of fractals : Benoit Mandelbrot

Outside in : William Thurston

Mathematical people.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-290) and index.

ISBN:

9780465096121

0465096123

OCLC:

1002854696