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

Stephen Hawking (Author)

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.

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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)

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  Books > Science > Mathematics > Pure Mathematics > Logic

Customer Reviews

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

By	W. Stevens - See all my reviews

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.

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

By	R. E. Little - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

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.