Buy New
 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Buy Used
Used - Very Good See details
$5.10 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History
 
 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History [Hardcover]

Stephen Hawking (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)

List Price: $29.95
Price: $20.42 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $9.53 (32%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Only 3 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want it delivered Wednesday, September 8? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
38 new from $4.84 50 used from $1.12 4 collectible from $12.00
Textbook StudentJoin Amazon Student and get FREE Two-Day Shipping for one year with Amazon Prime shipping benefits.

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover $20.42  
Paperback $15.61  

Special Offers and Product Promotions


Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with A Brief History of Time $11.99

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History + A Brief History of Time
  • This item: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • A Brief History of Time

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"God created the integers," wrote mathematician Leopold Kronecker, "All the rest is the work of Man." In this collection of landmark mathematical works, editor Stephen Hawking has assembled the greatest feats humans have ever accomplished using just numbers and their brains. Each of the 17 sections opens with a historical introduction of the featured author, and proceeds to a faithful translation of their most famous work. While most mathematicians will already have complete editions of Isaac Newton's Principia or Georg Cantor's Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, this book is unique in presenting just the best bits of these and other theoretical works. The collection spans 2,500 years and covers a vast range of theories: the parallel postulate, Boolean logic, differential calculus, and the philosophy of the unknowable among them. Dense with numbers, formulae, and ideas, God Created the Integers is quite challenging, but Hawking rewards curious readers with a look at how mathematics has been built. In contrast to the towering physical edifices of great civilizations of the past, Hawking writes, "The greatest wonder of the modern world is our understanding." --Therese Littleton

Product Description

Bestselling author and physicist Stephen Hawking explores the "masterpieces" of mathematics, 25 landmarks spanning 2,500 years and representing the work of 15 mathematicians, including Augustin Cauchy, Bernard Riemann, and Alan Turing. This extensive anthology allows readers to peer into the mind of genius by providing them with excerpts from the original mathematical proofs and results. It also helps them understand the progression of mathematical thought, and the very foundations of our present-day technologies. Each chapter begins with a biography of the featured mathematician, clearly explaining the significance of the result, followed by the full proof of the work, reproduced from the original publication.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 1176 pages
  • Publisher: Running Press; 1st ptg. edition (October 4, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0762419229
  • ISBN-13: 978-0762419227
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 2.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #144,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #59 in  Books > Science > Mathematics > Pure Mathematics > Logic

More About the Author

Stephen Hawking
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Visit Amazon's Stephen Hawking Page

Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
With the possible exception of Isaac Newton, Euclid is the best known mathematician of all time. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
equimultiples ofa, common measure ofa, indefinite class symbol, isosceles cone, final logical equation, proportional separando, function whose development, discrete manifoldness, given manifoldness, productive ofpleasure, proportional componendo, quadric differential, measure ofd, auxiliary parabola, areas ofwhich, multiple ofa, similar plane numbers, congruent relative, four times the cone, unity augmented, indefinite remainder, epsilon method, wealth transferable, rectilineal areas, divisible byp
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Isaac Newton, Royal Society, École Polytechnique, Daniel Bernoulli, Euclid's Elements, George Boole, Kurt Gödel, University of Berlin, World War, Académie des Sciences, École Normale, Lucasian Professor, Twenty-Second Lecture, Van Schooten, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Opuscula Analytica, The Analytical Theory of Heat, Alan Turing, Analytical Theory of Probabilities, French Revolution, Georg Cantor, Industrial Institute, Jacques Bernoulli, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:



Books on Related Topics (learn more)

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History
60% buy the item featured on this page:
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History 3.8 out of 5 stars (32)
$20.42
The Grand Design
15% buy
The Grand Design 4.5 out of 5 stars (11)
$15.12
The Universe in a Nutshell
9% buy
The Universe in a Nutshell 3.9 out of 5 stars (188)
$23.10
A Briefer History of Time
8% buy
A Briefer History of Time 4.4 out of 5 stars (95)
$12.87

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

 

Customer Reviews

32 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (11)
3 star:
 (8)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
169 of 175 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Good and bad, March 6, 2006
This review is from: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (Hardcover)
First, I loved the idea of this book--a compendum of the more significant mathematical breakthroughs in all their detail, as written by their creators. The text is refreshing in that it is not a watered down version of someone's results. I have a math background and all the details are appreciated. There's something about reading the original text, straight from the minds of these great men.

This book could be useful, for example, for someone who likes math and wants a 'sampler' of different areas of study. It could also be useful for someone reading up on the history of mathematics who wants to dig deeper into certain areas and see the original works.

All that said, I have to agree with another reviewer about the editing. It's awful (yes, awful) that such typographical errors could exist in a math book. The first section I looked at in this book, Riemann's original paper on the zeta function, had four typos ON THE SAME PAGE. This is disasterous to someone trying to learn the material for the first time, or someone trying to follow a tight line of argument. If this was a college text book, I'd probably burn it, because learning math is difficult enough, without having to contend with typos. To the editors of this book: COME ON GUYS, YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED (YES, ASHAMED) OF YOURSELVES (you're just COPYING something someone else wrote--and yet you managed to mess that up)! At least put an errata page somewhere online.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
178 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Browsers Delight But With One Important Defect, November 1, 2005
This review is from: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (Hardcover)
It's not for everyone, but if you have a couple of years of college-level math, you can find your way through most of the material. Open to a random page, see what's going on, if it grabs you, find the beginning of the presentation and plow right in. Hawking's biographical/historical pieces are a delight and worth buying the book for even if you don't do the math. How come I graded one of the greatest minds of our time only 80% (4 stars)? The damn book has no index and it drives me crazy. Because of this defect, it's a pain to try to tie the work of the great mathematicians together. You miss out on an entire layer of interest that could be developed so much more easily had their been an index.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
77 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Need an editor, couldn't agree more, March 29, 2006
By silmarilli (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (Hardcover)
I really want to give this book at least 4 stars as I love the idea of encapsulating those great mathematical breakthroughs in one book and giving each a proper account instead of over simplistic summaries like many other math readings do.
HOWEVER, the errors contained in this book is intolerable. It doesn't make sense anymore to give those mathematical details as you can hardly follow them due to the errors.
For example, on page 5 it prints:
If (2^n - 1) is a prime number then 2^(n-1)*(2^(n-1)-1) is a perfect number and that even perfect numbers must have this form.
it obveriously should be 2^(n-1)*(2^n - 1) instead of what has been printed. As other readers have suggested, you would expect more similar errors along the way.
Don't buy this book and wait for the 2nd edition if the publisher ever want to make an effort to make this book readable. I'm so very disappointed.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Exciting to read the great proofs but needs more editing
This book gives the ancient theories and proofs of math. It is thrilling to read, for example, proofs by Descartes and Archimedes showing the area of a circle and how to use... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Walker E. Rowe III

5.0 out of 5 stars math
Math, math, everywhere there is math. I have not finished this book. I will be a long time finishig this book, but it is great reading for an 11 hour flight to Europe. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Don Hudson

3.0 out of 5 stars Awkward layout
It's not a straight through linear read, but more of a pick the stuff that interests you and read it. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Feeling better W won

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting history
If you enjoy math and the history of science, you will like this compilation of works from ancient to modern times. Read more
Published 18 months ago by mb

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
I have a PhD in Mathematics so I understand the book and think it is great. Some people with a weak background in mathematics may find the book difficult.
Published 20 months ago by Robert P. Giese

4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting material
The book consists of short introductions by Hawking each followed by a famous or important document. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Zorac

5.0 out of 5 stars a great physicist tells about great breakthroughs in math
To see what interests a great physicist is, to me, of great interest.

In God Created the Integers, Stephen Hawking describes not only what he sees as the key... Read more
Published 22 months ago by lb

4.0 out of 5 stars Great compendium
Great compendium of (some of) the most important works in math. I would have added some authors but I think the selection is awesome. Read more
Published on April 18, 2008 by E. Gutesman

5.0 out of 5 stars My son liked his Christmas gift
My son asked for this book for Christmas, so I bought it for him. Looking inside, I saw it was way over my head. But he, being a math and computer genius, loved it.
Published on January 12, 2008 by Louise M. Gouge

3.0 out of 5 stars Shout for joy or toss it?
To evaluate my comments, I think you should know who I am and why I bought this book: I'm a former technical editor and writer. Read more
Published on December 5, 2007 by Catherine Mambretti

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
See all 3 discussions...  
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Discussion Replies Latest Post
A Philosophy of Science 46 4 minutes ago
Worst Biases in History Education 245 5 minutes ago
The Scientific Method 105 16 minutes ago
Eye on Israel III 55 1 hour ago
textbook scam 194 6 days ago
what calculus to take first 3 10 days ago
Have copy of Captain Hook to sell.....by gw 29 10 days ago
Search Customer Discussions
   





Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.