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Significant Figures

The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians

Significant Figures Open the full-size image

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Contributors

By Ian Stewart

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Sep 12, 2017
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465096138

Price

$16.99

Price

$21.99 CAD

Format

  1. Hardcover

Format:

  1. ebook $16.99 $21.99 CAD
  2. Hardcover $28.00 $35.00 CAD

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A celebrated mathematician traces the history of math through the lives and work of twenty-five pioneering mathematicians

In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart explores the work of 25 of history’s most important mathematicians, showing how they developed on each other’s work and built the mathematics we use today.

Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics from Archimedes to William Thurston, and learn about those too often left out of the cannon, such as Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the creator of algebra; Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer; and Emmy Noether, whose research on symmetry paved the way for modern physics.

Tracing the evolution of mathematics over the course of two millennia, Significant Figures will educate and delight aspiring mathematicians and experts alike.

Genre:

  • Nonfiction
  • Mathematics
  • History & Philosophy

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Ian Stewart

About the Author

Ian Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick. He is the accessible and successful (and prolific) author of numerous Basic books on mathematics including, most recently, Calculating the Cosmos. Stewart is also a regular research visitor at the University of Houston, the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications in Minneapolis, and the Santa Fe Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. His writing has appeared in New Scientist, Discover, Scientific American, and many newspapers in the U.K. and U.S. He lives in Coventry, England.

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