Review
"This is a facsimile reprint of John Hewlett's 1840 translation of Euler's
Algebra and Lagrange's
Additions thereto. Most of Euler's contribution is elementary, nothing more advanced than solving quartic equations, but worth having in order to appreciate his leisurely and effective style---would that more great mathematicians wrote so well and to such pedagogic effect. However, one third of the book is his lucid treatment of questions in number theory, and it is this material that drew Lagrange's comments. Here for the first time are the rigorous treatments of continued fractions and "Pell's" equation, and of quadratic forms. The combination of Euler's and Lagrange's tests, of experimental and theoretical research in Weil's description, is justly celebrated by the editors of Euler's
Opera omnia, who print the two together, and it is good to see this classic back in print in English. Every library without much Euler should at least have this volume. It is accompanied by an excerpt of Horner's memoir on the life of Euler, and a eulogy by Truesdell, with a useful bibliography." -- MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
2007 is the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Leonhard Euler. As a result there is likely to be a resurgence of interest in him and of course his work. His Elements of Algebra is one of the first books to set out elementary algebra in the modern form we would recognize today. However, it is sufficiently different from most modern approaches to the subject to be interesting for contemporary readers. Indeed, the choices made for setting out the curriculum, and the details of the techniques Euler employs, may surprise even expert readers. It is also the only mathematical work of Euler which is genuinely accessible to all. The work opens with a discussion of the nature of numbers and the signs + and -, before systematically developing algebra to a point at which polynomial equations of the fourth degree can be solved, first by an exact formula and then approximately. Euler's style is unhurried, and yet rarely seems long winded.
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