Significant Figures: Lives and Works of Trailblazing Mathematicians

Author(s): Ian Stewart

Fiction

Which mathematician elaborated a crucial concept the night before he died in a duel? Who funded his maths and medical career through gambling and chess? Who learned maths from her wallpaper? Ian Stewart presents the extraordinary lives and amazing discoveries of twenty-five of history's greatest mathematicians from Archimedes and Liu Hui to Benoit Mandelbrot and William Thurston. His subjects are the inspiring individuals from all over the world who have made crucial contributions to mathematics. They include the rediscovered geniuses Srinivasa Ramanujan and Emmy Noether, alongside the towering figures of Muhammad al-Khwarizmi (inventor of the algorithm), Pierre de Fermat, Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Bernhard Reimann (precursor to Einstein), Henri Poincare, Ada Lovelace (arguably the first computer programmer), Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. Ian Stewart's vivid accounts are fascinating in themselves and, taken together, cohere into a riveting history of key steps in the development of mathematics.

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Vivid accounts of the lives of 25 of the world's greatest mathematicians with clear descriptions of their far-reaching discoveries

Stewart is Britain's most brilliant and prolific populariser of maths. -- Alex Bellos This is not pure maths. It is maths contaminated with wit, wisdom, and wonder. Ian really is unsurpassed as raconteur of the world of numbers. He guides us on a mind-boggling journey from the ultra trivial to the profound. Thoroughly entertaining. New Scientist Praise for previous books: 'With captivating stories and his signature clarity, Ian Stewart shows us how math makes the world - and the rest of the universe - go round -- Steven Strogatz, Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of X

Ian Stewart is Mathematics Professor Emeritus at the University of Warwick. His recent books include Incredible Numbers, Seventeen Equations that Changed the World, Professor Stewart's Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries and Calculating the Cosmos (all published by Profile). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

General Fields

  • : 9781781258996
  • : Profile Books Ltd
  • : Profile Books Ltd
  • : 0.476
  • : August 2017
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : August 2017
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Ian Stewart
  • : Paperback
  • : 2018
  • : en
  • : 510.922
  • : 352
  • : Black and white photos, figures and diagrams throughout