e: The Story of a Number [Paperback]

Eli Maor (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691058547 | ISBN-13: 978-0691058542 | Publication Date: May 4, 1998 | Edition: 1

The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest background in mathematics, this biography of e brings out that number's central importance in mathematics and illuminates a golden era in the age of science.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Until about 1975, logarithms were every scientist's best friend. They were the basis of the slide rule that was the totemic wand of the trade, listed in huge books consulted in every library. Then hand-held calculators arrived, and within a few years slide rules were museum pieces.

But e remains, the center of the natural logarithmic function and of calculus. Eli Maor's book is the only more or less popular account of the history of this universal constant. Maor gives human faces to fundamental mathematics, as in his fantasia of a meeting between Johann Bernoulli and J.S. Bach. e: The Story of a Number would be an excellent choice for a high school or college student of trigonometry or calculus. --Mary Ellen Curtin

From Library Journal

Everyone whose mathematical education has gone beyond elementary school is familiar with the number known as pi. Far fewer have been introduced to e, a number that is of equal importance in theoretical mathematics. Maor (mathematics, Northeastern Illinois Univ.) tries to fill this gap with this excellent book. He traces the history of mathematics from the 16th century to the present through the intriguing properties of this number. Maor says that his book is aimed at the reader with a "modest" mathematical background. Be warned that his definition of modest may not be yours. The text introduces and discusses logarithms, limits, calculus, differential equations, and even the theory of functions of complex variables. Not easy stuff! Nevertheless, the writing is clear and the material fascinating. Highly recommended.
- Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1 edition (May 4, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691058547
• ISBN-13: 978-0691058542
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #798,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than the story of the second-most famous number, November 8, 2004

By 

Duwayne Anderson (Saint Helens, Oregon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: e: The Story of a Number (Paperback)

This is the second book by Eli Maor that I have read and reviewed in as many months (the previous book was "To Infinity and beyond"). As I was reading this latest book I thought several times that the title was wrong. I think a more appropriate title might be "A popular introduction to calculus" or "The road to calculus." Then, again, he does more than just calculus, too. So I'm not sure what to call it. It's more than just about e, and it's more than just about calculus. It's all that, with a lot of other interesting tidbits tied in as well. While Eli does spend quite a bit of time discussing e, this book goes well beyond a simple linear history of a number that's fundamental to modern mathematics.
Eli begins his story with John Napier and the invention/use of logarithms as tools for calculation. I found this introduction interesting because it reminded me how valuable calculation tools were, in the days before electronic calculators. I even found myself rummaging through my desk for that long-forgotten slide rule and remembering with a degree of nostalgia the many hours spent working through problems in mathematics and physics during my high school years, and how I'd pride myself on being able to carry the a full three significant digits through a complex sting of calculations.
It seems as though the initial chapters of Maor's book deal more with the history of e than does the middle of the book. Somewhere around page 40 Maor moves away from mathematical history aimed squarely at natural logarithms and focuses more on what is (I suspect) his true love: calculus. This is one of the best introductions to calculus I've seen, primarily because Maor did such a nice job of bring together all the historical footnotes.
Coincidentally, as I was reading Mayor's book my wife was taking a class for teachers, aimed at educators who teach calculus in the middle and high schools. She found the book immensely helpful in both dealing with the actual mathematics in her class as well as providing insight into ways of introducing concepts relating to higher-level mathematics to young students. She introduced Mayor's book to other students in her class, as well as the professor (who had read it already, of course), all of whom enjoyed it immensely.
In terms of the history that he covers, I thought the discussion relating to Newton and Leibniz was the most interesting. My own coursework in Physics used Newton's dot notation, while my courses in mathematics adopted Leibniz's differential notation. Reading Maor's book provided a bit more insight into the historical quirks that led to the notation in common use today.
Especially interesting was his discussion about Newton's approach to the calculus. I think that if students had to use the notation and approach first used by Newton, calculus might still be relegated largely to the college curriculum. I really had no idea, before reading Maor's book, how convoluted Newton's approach was in comparison to that used by Leibniz. Newton is often portrayed (rightfully so) as a genius, and Mayor's description of Newton's calculus left me marveling that Newton managed to work through it as he did, given the (relatively) more difficult approach he took.
The end of Maor's book uses the calculus to illustrate several examples showing how e appears in various mathematical and physical problems. There are examples using aerodynamic drag, music, spirals, hanging chains and the cycloid. No discussion of e would be complete without a nice explanation of the function that is its own derivative, which Maor tells with characteristic clarity.
Frequently while reading Maor's book I found myself wishing I'd had this introduction before taking several of the classes I took during my school years. His treatment of the complex plane, for example, is as clear as his introduction to basic ideas in calculus. Looking back on my first class in complex variables, I recall the fog that surrounded my initial introduction to conformal mapping. Maor, though, makes it easy. With the skill of a master educator, he manages to explain the concept with such ease that you learn the essential ideas almost before you realize where he is taking you. Though most texts of this sort would not tread on a subject as foreboding to the general public as the Cauchy-Riemann equations, Maor explains the basic concepts as clearly and almost as effortlessly as he does conformal mapping. Ordinarily I wouldn't think it's possible to explain Cauchy-Riemann in a book that's intended for the general public with an interest in mathematics, but that's what Maor does, and he does it well.
In short, this nice little book manages to cover a lot of mathematical territory with the skill that only a master educator can muster. It is definitely a whole lot more than just the story of the second-most famous number in mathematics.

102 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reeding for anybody teaching or studying calculus!, August 13, 2000

By 

Helmer Aslaksen (Singapore) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: e: The Story of a Number (Paperback)

To those of you who are not familiar with Maor, let me point out that he is a mathematician (as opposed to a lot of the other people who write popular math books) with an immense knowledge of math history and also an excellent writer. Some reviewers have compared this book to books like "An Imaginary Tale" by Paul J. Nahin and "History of Pi" by Petr Beckmann. This is totally missing the point. Both of those books are written by non-mathematicians, and contain error that will annoy mathematicians. Maor on the other hand is a superb scholar. I've read all his four books quite carefull, and I've not found any errors.

This book will give you a great understanding of what calculus is all about.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but Unevenly Paced, September 5, 2004

By 

T. W. (Northeastern United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: e: The Story of a Number (Paperback)

The beginning and the end of Maor's story are compelling. He spells out exactly what John Napier put in his original "logarithmic" tables--it turns out that these were logs to the base 1/e, shifted by a factor of 10,000,000, even though their creator wouldn't have put it that way. I was, however, disappointed that no actual *example* is given of a calculation that was made possible by these unusual original tables. Maor tells us how excited Kepler and others were by the possibilities, and hints that computations involving sines were especially aided, but there's not a single example of how the pre-Briggs (log to base 10) logarithm was ever used. (And let me point out that this is not an obvious matter; after extensive googling I have only been able to locate very artificial examples of what Napier's very incomplete tables were good for.)

Still, the opening chapters on the "pre-history" of e (before the invention of calculus) are one of the strongest parts of this book. Where Maor gets bogged down is in the long digression telling of the invention of calculus and the bitter priority dispute. In my opinion, there's a solid block of dead weight beginning from the first page of Chapter 8, and Maor doesn't get his steam back until the latter part of Chapter 11 (when we meet the truly "mirabilis" logarithmic spiral).

Some of the sidebars are excellent--e.g. the math behind terminal velocity, which makes parachuting possible ("The Parachutist") and the Weber-Fechner law, which claims to give a mathematical model of human response to affective stimuli ("Can Perceptions Be Quantified?").

As in his "Trigonometric Delights," Maor excels in presenting the world of complex analysis that was opened up by Leonhard Euler in the 18th century. Some background is really required to enjoy all this, but, if you have it, you are treated to the Cauchy-Riemann equations, and to excellent discussions (partly relegated to the appendices) of the equiangularity of the logarithmic spiral (proved with an elegant conformal mapping) and the full range of geometric and analytic analogies between the circular functions (sine, cosine, etc.) and their hyperbolic counterparts (cosh, sinh, etc.).

All in all, I recommend this title, but do skim over the tedious exposition of calculus & the priority dispute.