God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History
by Stephen Hawking
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen HawkingEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2007-10-08
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 1376
Publisher: Running Press
Book Reviews of God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History
Book Review: interesting history
Summary: 4 Stars
If you enjoy math and the history of science, you will like this compilation of works from ancient to modern times. Hawking's brief comments are interesting for prespective and some superficial explanation of the mathematics, but the main gist of this book is the reproduction of the seminal works themselves, from Euclid to Godel, living from 325 BCE to 1978 CE.
One gets a sense of the paradigm shift from geopetry to calculus to number theory and so on. For instance, it is fascinating that geometers calculated pi to between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71, but apparently did not come up with the limit concept that made calculus possible. Looking at their papers, it is amazing what they did with triangles and proofs, compared to what many of us probably struggled with in middle to high school geometry/ trigonometry. They were just one small insight away from the calculus, it seems, from looking at their diagrams!
By the middle of the book, the math surpassed my experience, but it was still interesting to try and follow along by skimming through it.
Is this book for a layperson? Only one with a strong interest in math, and even then, maybe not for everyone. It is not a textbook. I did not understand a lot of it, but I still enjoyed it. For a mathematician, this would be a fantastic gift, I should think.
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Summary of God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History
Pulled together for the first time, and paired with commentary from the world?s most respected scholars, God Created the Integers presents history?s extraordinary moments in math, culled from 2,500 years of history and 21 distinguished mathematicians, four more than the hardcover edition. Each chapter begins with a profile of one of these mathematical masters, followed by original printings of their relevant works. This new paperback edition includes the work of Euler, Galois, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky. Readers get a window into the minds of these geniuses and can see the unfolding thought process as it leads, inevitably, to the high-water marks in mathematical thinking. This new edition comes with an index to make it a valuable and easy-to-use research and reference tool.
"God created the integers," wrote mathematician Leopold Kronecker, "All the rest is the work of Man." In this collection of landmark mathematical works, editor Stephen Hawking has assembled the greatest feats humans have ever accomplished using just numbers and their brains. Each of the 17 sections opens with a historical introduction of the featured author, and proceeds to a faithful translation of their most famous work. While most mathematicians will already have complete editions of Isaac Newton's Principia or Georg Cantor's Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, this book is unique in presenting just the best bits of these and other theoretical works. The collection spans 2,500 years and covers a vast range of theories: the parallel postulate, Boolean logic, differential calculus, and the philosophy of the unknowable among them. Dense with numbers, formulae, and ideas, God Created the Integers is quite challenging, but Hawking rewards curious readers with a look at how mathematics has been built. In contrast to the towering physical edifices of great civilizations of the past, Hawking writes, "The greatest wonder of the modern world is our understanding." --Therese Littleton
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