History of Mathematics: From a Mathematician's Vantage Point (Hardcover)

by Nikolaos K. Artemiadis (Author)

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Product Description
This book offers a very interesting panorama of the development of mathematics from the ancient Babylonians and Greeks to the present. It is written in a lucid style with very readable mathematical content. Understanding the material requires some broad mathematical education, but not a lot of specialized knowledge. One of the strongest sections deals with the accomplishments of the Greeks. The author clearly explains the problems tackled in ancient Greece, places them in context, outlines the accomplishments (some with concise proofs), and compares these with our present understanding of the subject. He also places the mathematical achievements of ancient Greece in the context of early Ionian Philosophy, Platonism, Aristotelism, or in the mindset of the Alexandrians. The chapters on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are presented clearly with emphasis on the great figures of these two centuries. Mathematics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are presented more thematically than chronologically. Analysis, in particular functional analysis, receives a very good overview. An appendix contains a transcript of the talk by Laurent Schwartz on the historical roots and basic notions of the theory of distributions. Other chapters discuss topics such as modern algebra, set theory, logic, group representations, calculus of variations, celestial mechanics, fractals, the fast Fourier transform, and wavelets. The book is supplemented with a chronological table and two detailed indices. It is suitable for graduate students, research mathematicians, and those interested in the history of mathematics and related areas.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 454 pages
• Publisher: American Mathematical Society (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821834037
• ISBN-13: 978-0821834039
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,402,040 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Plagiarism, March 24, 2005

By	Reb Hastrev - See all my reviews

Consider a brief and somewhat controversial passage from Morris Kline's "Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times" (occuring on pg. 23):

"[T]he Egyptians and Babylonians were crude carpenters, whereas the Greeks were magnificent architects. One does find more favorable, even laudatory, descriptions of the Babylonian and Egyptian achievements. But these are made by specialists who become, perhaps unconsciously, overimpressed by their own field of interest."

Compare this with a passage appearing on page 149 of the new AMS publication, "History of Mathematics from a Mathematician's Vantage Point", written (according to the book's cover) by Nicolaos Artemiadis.

"[T]he Egyptians and the Babylonians were "clumsy carpenters" while the Greeks were "magnificent architects". Of course, there exist historians who gave a more favorable judgment regarding the achievements of the Babylonians and the Egyptians. But these judgments were made by specialists who were perhaps unconsciously impressed more than necessary by the object of their interest."

The title page of Artemiadis' book explains that it is an English translation of a book originally published in Greek in the year 2000. The title page neglects, however, to mention that the ostensibly original Greek text is largely a translation of an English history - Morris Kline's "Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times". Morris Kline is given no credit whatsoever in the body of Artemiadis' text (apart from being listed in the bibliography), despite the fact that he wrote much of it. Although the translation and retranslation process has altered many of Kline's individual words, even a superficial inspection reveals that sentences, paragraphs, and even whole pages of Artemiadis' writings are clearly isomorphic to passages in Kline's classic history. To put matters bluntly, "History of Mathematics from a Mathematician's Vantage Point" is a work of blatant plagiarism.

I have occasionally joked with students that "if you must cheat, at least have the good sense to cheat well." Apparently, Artemiadis never heard this advice. Rather than playing it safe and stealing from an obscure source, he chose to pilfer prose from a standard history of mathematics familiar to most mathematicians. Still worse, he made the mistake of plagiarizing the writings of a highly literate iconoclast whose ideas are easily identifiable both by their novelty and by their very phrasing.

Morris Kline, incidentally, is not the only victim, though he is the most conspicuous. If nothing else, many readers will recognize the chronological table which appears in the back of "History of Mathematics from a Mathematician's Vantage Point" as a slightly abbreviated version of the table appearing in Carl Boyer's, "A History of Mathematics".

This is an appalling book - the sort of thing one hears about, but rarely actually holds in one's hands (in an AMS publication no less! How did this get by the editors?) The idea that this inept thievery is supposed to represent the "mathematician's viewpoint" only adds insult to injury.