Title:
Significant figures : the lives and work of great mathematicians / Ian Stewart.
Author:
Stewart, Ian, 1945- author.
Publication Information:
New York : Basic Books, 2017.
Call Number:
QA28 .S74 2017
Abstract:
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.
Edition:
First US edition.
ISBN:
9780465096121
Physical Description:
vi, 303 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
Subject Term:
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.
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