Mathematics: From Creating the Pyramids to Exploring Infinity

by Anne Rooney

In order to understand the universe you must know the language in which it is written. And that language is mathematics.
- Galileo (1564-1642)

People have always sought order in the apparent chaos of the universe. Mathematics has been our most valuable tool in that search, uncovering the patterns and rules that govern our world and beyond. This book traces humankind's greatest achievements, plotting a journey through the mathematical intellects of the last 4,000 years to where we stand today.

It features the giants of mathematics, from Euclid and Pythagoras, through Napier and Newton, to Leibniz, Riemann, Russell, and many more.

Topics include:
• Counting and measuring from the earliest times
• The Ancient Egyptians and geometry
• The movements of planets
• Measuring and mapping the world
• Fuzzy logic and set theory
• The death of numbers

ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Fundamentals Series explains fascinating and far-reaching topics in simple terms. Designed with rustic, tactile covers and filled with dynamic illustrations and fact boxes, these books will help you quickly get to grips with complex topics that affect our day-to-day living.

Genres: Science

256 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2020

About the author

Anne Rooney gained a degree and then a PhD in medieval literature from Trinity College, Cambridge. After a period of teaching medieval English and French literature at the universities of Cambridge and York, she left to pursue a career as a freelance writer. She has written many books for adults and children on a variety of subjects, including literature and history. She lives in Cambridge and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Essex.

Reviews

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wonderful overview of the mathematical discoveries and people shaping this field throughout the ages. I am very surprised how philosophy and mathematics were so closely aligned in the past (also considering many philosophers pursued mathematics too). This book surprised me by being more mathematically detailed than I initially imagined. I think the „normal“ American High School mathematics wouldn’t be enough (I also think the approach in America of breaking down maths into Geometry, Algebra, Calculus etc courses is faulty and this book is even more evidence of different areas of mathematics being interconnected and that it should be taught as such). The German Maths GK would be enough in terms of materials covered, but I believe only people having LK would appreciate the reasoning behind the mathematical discoveries.
Whilst the book did mention more maths than I expected by a book geared towards the general public, I personally would have still appreciated more proofs or mathematical explanations. It becomes very obvious that it is written by a historian rather than a mathematician. Additionally, I think the book could benefit from a lot more graphs and visual aids to explain concepts. As it’s only 250 pages long, one could have dedicated at least another 100pages to supplementary diagrams. The diagrams that are used are only used in the most basic concepts that are already more easily understand (e.g integration and the Riemann series). The choice of where to include pictures is therefore very disappointing and is probably the main reason why I cannot give this book 5 stars.
Overall, this was a fun and insightful read. I learnt a lot about the great thinkers that shaped mathematics and it was fun putting discoveries into a historical perspective. Would recommend this to anyone interested in maths. Would not recommend to people without a love for numbers and logic though.

Note to self: go through book again and find famous works to read of Descartes, Newton etc.

[Hubert RvR · Rating 4 out of 5]

This piece puts the lifetime of math knowledge into an interesting perspective. The author skillfully walks the reader through the chronological developments of key branches of mathmatics by refering them to the ultimate needs of the society that often were the trigger for certain advancements. The key takeways:
- numbers used to count things
- it took a long time to create the notion of zero
- negative numbers until the notion of debt came about were considered 'absurd'
- googolplex is 1 followed by googol zeros
- twin primes are primes that are separated by
- the goldbach conjucture (any number >2 can be written as sum of 2 primes
- 6x6 magic square (numbers from 1 to 36)
- then need to measure (geometry of planes and then solids)
- cubit a length from fingertips to the elbow
- Euclid axioms
- then - marginal utility, short term benefit preference, independence as observations, notion of risk based on provability of occurrence only in 18th century
- censuses were precursors of statistics
- statistics was first in social sciences, slowly adopted in natural sciences, galton board
- florence nightingale - fist nurse, details analysis of data, coxcomb plots
- randomness in sampling, jerzy neyman and modern polling
- then - theory of sets (georg cantor)
- fuzzy theory
- bertrand russell and barber's paradox
- deduction and induction to prove everything
- discussion around whether the maths is invention or discovery and whether it is just a proxy based on how human cognitive skills are shaped.

[Zack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible book taking you from the first notion of numbers to the cutting edge of set theory. While the topics in this book can be hard to grasp at deeper levels, this book does a good job of giving the reader a sense of the subject matter without getting bogged down in the details!