The Fifth Postulate: How Unraveling A Two Thousand Year Old Mystery Unraveled the Universe

by Jason Socrates Bardi

The great discovery that no one wanted to make It's the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and Euclidean geometry has been profoundly influential for centuries. One mystery remains, Euclid's fifth postulate has eluded for two thousand years all attempts to prove it. What happens when three nineteenth-century mathematicians realize that there is no way to prove the fifth postulate and that it ought to be discarded—along with everything they'd come to know about geometry? Jason Socrates Bardi shares the dramatic story of the moment when the tangible and easily understood world we live in gave way to the strange, mind-blowing world of relativity, curved space-time, and more. "Jason Socrates Bardi tells the story of the discovery of non-Euclidian geometry—one of the greatest intellectual advances of all time—with tremendous clarity and verve. I loved this book."  —John Horgan, author,  The End of Science and Rational Mysticism "An accessible and engrossing blend of micro-biography, history and mathematics, woven together to reveal a blockbuster discovery."  —David Wolman, author of  Righting the Mother Tongue  and  A Left-Hand Turn Around the World

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Mathematics, History

272 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2008

Reviews

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating history of the development of non-Euclidean geometry. Looked at Carl Gauss, Nikolai Lobachevsky, and Janos Bolyai. Also includes a look back at some historical attempts to prove Euclid's fifth postulate. The only disappointment was that the author did not really make an attempt to describe how non-Euclidean geometry acts (that is to say, the book didn't really try to explain the math). Overall, a nice read.

[Jennifer]

Studying Euclid for school and just heard about all the fuss over his Postulate 5. This book looks really interesting to me....when the semester is over. It'll make interesting Christmas break reading.

[ltcomdata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good popular history of the men who worked on overthrowing Euclid's 5th Postulate. Yes, it includes the 3 big ones --- Mr. Gauss, Mr. Lobachevsky, and Mr. Bolyai ---, but it also includes a myriad of other names who started out trying to prove the Fifth Postulate by denying it. As such, this book is a great resource for any more in depth research on the topic.

[Benoit B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to read, I recommended to anyone who has general interests in philosophy or mathematics as it is not technical and is historical which makes it easy to locate the development of the history of (as the author states) the most important fight surrounding the development of mathematics. The author is also very good about conveying the personal and more intimate life and hardships of the many mathematicians and the conditions in which they lived, note worthy here that of Carl F. Gauss whose work is very central in the development of anti-Euclidean geometry. The reader can connect to these many great figures on a personal level and see there more human side as oppose to the typical glamor and excessive grandeur we are sometimes accustomed to. I do feel that the author tends to hold similar views as that of Poincare with regards to Riemannian vs Euclidean geometry, even though the author does present the superiority of Riemann over Euclid. I feel the author should have sided explicitly with Gauss and Riemann. But all in all a great read and a most excellent topic!

[Keith Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started off as a disjointed collection of factoids, but once the Gauss story line got its legs things got better. Not much new for me, but the few pieces that fell into place for this history of how non-euclidean geometry was developed did add a lot to my understanding

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gauss, Gauss, Gauss. Had the book been half the length I'd have given it 3.5 to 4 stars.