From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematics, Professor E.T. Bell, comes a witty, accessible, and fascinating look at the beautiful craft and enthralling history of mathematics.Men of Mathematics provides a rich account of major mathematical milestones, from the geometry of the Greeks through Newton’s calculus, and on to the laws of probability, symbolic logic, and the fourth dimension. Bell breaks down this majestic history of ideas into a s...

"This important book … presents a broad account of the part played by mathematics in the evolution of civilization, describing clearly the main principles, methods, and theories of mathematics that have survived from about 4000 B.C. to 1940." — Booklist.In this time-honored study, one of the twentieth century's foremost scholars and interpreters of the history and meaning of mathematics masterfully outlines the development of leading ideas and clearly explains the mathemati...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREA mission to Mars. A freak accident. One man’s struggle to survive. From the author of Project Hail Mary comes “a hugely entertaining novel that reads like a rocket ship afire” (Chicago Tribune).“Brilliant . . . a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years . . . utterly compelling.”—The Wall Stre...

A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing's centenary, includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter.Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer....

This is the perfect introduction for those who have a lingering fear of maths. If you think that maths is difficult, confusing, dull or just plain scary, then The Maths Handbook is your ideal companion.Covering all the basics including fractions, equations, primes, squares and square roots, geometry and fractals, Dr Richard Elwes will lead you gently towards a greater understanding of this fascinating subject. Even apparently daunting concepts are explained simply, with the assista...

Einstein's Dreams meets Tuesdays with Morrie in Leonard Mlodinow's touching memoir about the guidance granted him by his mentor, the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman: "An accessible portrait of a brilliant man" (Stephen Hawking).For some, it was that special connection with a grandparent or a football coach, a boss, or a cleric. For Leonard Mlodinow, as a young physicist struggling to find h...

"A gem. . . . An unforgettable account of one of the great moments in the history of human thought." —Steven PinkerProbing the life and work of Kurt Gödel, Incompleteness indelibly portrays the tortured genius whose vision rocked the stability of mathematical reasoning— and brought him to the edge of madness.

In 2006, an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman solved one of the world's greatest intellectual puzzles. The Poincare conjecture is an extremely complex topological problem that had eluded the best minds for over a century. In 2000, the Clay Institute in Boston named it one of seven great unsolved mathematical problems, and promised a million dollars to anyone who could find a solution. Perelman was awarded the prize this year - and declined the money. Journalist Masha G...

Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use--from our computers and cars, to our kitchen gadgets and home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? In The Logician and the Engineer, best-selling popular math writer Paul Nahin combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the rem...

A fascinating memoir from the man who revitalized visual geometry, and whose ideas about fractals have changed how we look at both the natural world and the financial world.Benoit Mandelbrot, the creator of fractal geometry, has significantly improved our understanding of, among other things, financial variability and erratic physical phenomena. In The Fractalist, Mandelbrot recounts the high points of his life with exuberance and an eloquent fluency, deepening our underst...

A dazzling group biography of the early twentieth-century thinkers who transformed the way the world thought about math and scienceInspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation f...

First published in 1972, Ronald W. Clark's definitive biography of Einstein, the Promethean figure of our age, goes behind the phenomenal intellect to reveal the human side of the legendary absent-minded professor. Here is the classic portrait of the scientist and the man: the boy growing up in the Swiss Alps, the young man caught in an unhappy first marriage, the passionate pacifist who agonized over making The Bomb, the indifferent Zionist asked to head the Israeli state, the physicist w...