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Great Moments in Mathematics Before 1650 (Dolciani Mathematical Expositions)

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My first contact with this book was when it was used as a text in a history of mathematics class I took in graduate school. After pounding my way through advanced mathematics texts, I found it a welcome relief to experience the writings of Howard Eves for the first time. His ability to take complex topics and turn them into a gentle enunciation is among the highest ever created by the powers that create such mathematical beings.

The book contains the condensations of twenty of his lectures about what he calls "Great Moments in Mathematics." In this case, he restricts himself to the somewhat artificial limit of events that occurred before 1650. Those moments are powerful in the annals of mathematics, some examples are:

*) The discovery of irrational numbers

*) The development of compact and efficient algebraic notation

*) The discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem

*) The codification of geometry by Euclid

*) The invention of logarithms and the slide rule

*) The application of mathematics to the motion of heavenly bodies

This is one of the few significant mathematics books that I read from cover to cover in one day. It is that enjoyable. Eves also includes a series of exercises at the end of each chapter and there are hints to the solution of some of them at the end of the book. Therefore, it is also well suited for a course in the history of mathematics.