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84 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cicadas to Rubik's Cube, August 13, 2009
This review is from: The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics (Sterling Milestones) (Hardcover)
In his previous science book, " Archimedes to Hawking", Cliff Pickover explored the great laws of science and the lives of the physicists and chemists who discovered the laws. In the "Math Book", Pickover takes on the great moments or milestones of mathematics. While the great laws of physics were almost all named by the early twentieth century, scientific milestones continue to be established. Thus, the mathematical milestones of the "Math Book" are documented into the twenty-first century.
The publishers have provided Pickover with a challenging format. Each milestone is described on just one page, and each is accompanied by a full page image on the facing page. These limitations restrict the scope of the presentation for each subject. However, having as many as 250 milestones has allowed Pickover to expand some subject areas into more than one related milestone.
The images are absolutely beautiful. They include paintings, diagrams, photos, and computer-generated art. Among the best are a close-up photo of the game of Go, a map of the Internet as the illustration for the Konigsberg Bridges, the Gray Code using a diagram taken from a US patent, and the Archimedes Spiral as exemplified by a fiddlehead fern.
Many of the milestones cover esoteric theoretical areas of mathematical analysis. This was not my best subject in school. However, because of the latitude provided by having 250 topics to cover, Pickover is able to include more technology-related topics. He has authored many math books, for example, " Wonders of Numbers", " A Passion for Mathematics", " The Mobius Strip", and this year, an updated paperback edition of " The Loom of God." However, he is also a down-to-earth scientist. The topics in this book include such concrete subjects as the bed sheet folding problem, public key cryptography, Rubik's Cube, and my favorite, cicada-generated prime numbers. Not all milestones were charted by humans!
Is every possible milestone included? Even with 250 topics, and yes there are exactly 250, Pickover invites the submission of additional milestones. Before reading the book, I had some expectations of what topics should be covered in the milestones. Upon reading, I found that almost all of my ideas were included.
However, I do have a suggestion for an additional milestone, Legendre Polynomials. These polynomials, well-known to physicists, are used to express the form of atomic wave functions. Thus, they underlie the very fabric of matter. If you can include Bessel Functions, why not have Legendre Polynomials? There must be other milestones to suggest. Perhaps the "Math Book" can become an example of Hilbert's Grand Hotel. Even when the hotel is full, there is always room for another guest.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some wonderful reading!, August 21, 2009
This review is from: The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics (Sterling Milestones) (Hardcover)
The Math Book
By Clifford A. Pickover
What a wonderful book. Simply terrific! And, nearly all of the illustrations are
in magnificent full color too. In these pages are told the stories of exactly 250
of some of the greatest events in the history of mathematics, each entry being one
page long with an illustration on the facing page and arranged in chronological
order.
So deep and pervasive is mathematics that mathematical behavior has been
observed in ants in their quest for food, and they appear to have some sort of
counting mechanism which serves as an ant odometer counting the number of steps they take. It must have been an interesting job trimming their little legs or
installing tiny stilts to detect changes in their travel distances. From ant
journeys it's quite a reading journey to the final 2007 entry on Max Tegmark's
speculation that the universe not only can be described in mathematical terms,
but actually is mathematics. In between the ants and the universe we see the spirit of mathematics
persisting in a Nazi concentration camp where Curt Herzstark invented an
ingenious calculating device; so successful was his Curta calculator that it
became a commercial product for about 25 years. There is also a nice story of
Pope Sylvester II who was known as the Number Pope for being a mathematician;
other stories are about dice and games and other chance phenomena, magic squares,and there are some of the most dazzling fractals ever put to paper, especially the
one that accompanies the entry on the Hausdorff dimension. Even the entry on the Austrian logician Kurt Godel is something special; it is the first time I have ever
seen a picture of Godel with his friend Albert Einstein in color.
Not only is this book a fabulous work on the lively history of mathematics,
but one additional number is especially wonderful. The price; its wonderful.
Dennis W. Gordon
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Will renew anyone's interest in math, August 18, 2009
This review is from: The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics (Sterling Milestones) (Hardcover)
Despite already having published more than forty popular science and mathematics books, Cliff Pickover surely outdoes himself with The Math Book!
This is a collection of 250 "milestones" of mathematics throughout history, complete with breathtaking glossy color illustrations for each entry (a first for his books), as well as insightful descriptions that explain the history and the significance of each of these marvels of mathematics. This includes well-known items such as Magic Squares, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, and Fermat's Last Theorem, as well as lesser-known items like Surreal Numbers and Beltrami's Pseudosphere.
As obscure as some of the items might seem to lay readers, the text is thoroughly descriptive and accessible. If you have even the slightest inclination towards mathematics, the entries will immediately draw you in, and won't let go until you've read through them all. The illustrations for each corresponding item include photographs, paintings, and computer-generated images that test the limits of your imagination.
The 250 entries in the book make it an incredibly fascinating stroll through the history of mathematics. The book definitely has bestseller potential, and could easily be one of Pickover's best works.
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