Legend has it that the first magic square, where all lines and diagonals add up to the same figure, was revealed more than 2,000 years ago when a river turtle appeared to have ancient Chinese numerals inscribed on sections of its shell. Patterns are everywhere in nature, and counting, measuring, and calculating changes are as old as civilization itself, as are many of the theorems and laws of math. The Pythagorean Theorem was used to plot out fields for planting crops before the ancient Greek Pythagoras was even born, but the story begins long before that, with tally marks on rock and bone surviving from the Stone Age. Here is the essential guide to mathematics, an authoritative reference book and timeline that explores the work of history s greatest mathematicians. From the teasing genius of Pierre de Fermat, who said he knew the answers but rarely gave them up, to the fractal pattern discovered by Waclaw Sierpinski now used to plan the route a mailman takes, here are 100 landmark moments in this intensely rigorous discipline, seen through the eyes of the people who lived them. Glimpse the abstract landscape of infinite numbers and multi-dimensional shapes as you learn about the most famous math men of all. Pythagoras had a love of numbers so strong it led to a violent death. Then there is Fibonacci, whose guide for bookkeepers changed the way we add and Descartes, who took inspiration from a fly to convert numbers into shapes and back again, changing math forever. Over many centuries, great minds puzzled over the evidence and, step-by-step, edged ever closer to the truth. Behind every one of these breakthrough moments there s a story about a confounding puzzle that became a discovery and changed the way we see the world. Here are one hundred of the most significant and we call these Ponderables. In Mathematics: An Illustrated History of Numbers, you ll get a peak into the Imponderables, too, the mysteries yet to be solved that will one day lead great thinkers forward to an even greater understanding of the universe. Includes a removable fold-out concertina neatly housed in the back of the book. This fold-out provides a 12-page Timeline History of Mathematics that embeds the story in historical context and shows Who Did What When at a glance. The reverse side features some of the greatest mathematical enigmas and interesting facts about the world of numbers.
Author(s): Tom Jackson (editor)
Edition: 1
Publisher: Shelter Harbor Press
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 168
Introduction
Prehistory to the Middle Ages
1 Learning to Count
2 Positional Notation
3 The Abacus
4 Pythagoras Theorem
5 The Rhind Papyrus
6 Zero
7 The Math of Music
8 The Golden Ratio
9 Platonic Solids
10 Logic
11 Geometry
12 Magic Squares
13 Prime Numbers
14 Pi
15 Measuring the Earth
16 The Powers of Ten
17 The Modern Calendar
18 Diophantine Equations
19 Hindu-Arabic Number System
20 Algorithms
21 Cryptography
22 Algebra
23 Fibonacci Sequence
The Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment
24 Perspective Geometry
25 Non-Linear Equations
26 Pendulum Law
27 x and y
28 Ellipses
29 Logarithms
30 Napier's Bones
31 Slide Rule
32 Complex Numbers
33 Cartesian Coordinates
34 Laws of Fall
35 Calculators
36 Pascal's Triangle
37 Chance
38 Principle of Induction
39 Calculus
40 Math of Gravity
41 Binary Numbers
New Numbers, New Theories
42 e
43 Graph Theory
44 Three-Body Problem
45 Euler's Identity
46 Bayes' Theorem
47 Maskelyne and the Personal Equation
48 Malthusianism
49 Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
50 Perturbation Theory
51 Central Limit Theorem
52 Fourier Analysis
53 The Mechanical Computer
54 Bessel Function
55 Group Theory
56 Non-Euclidean Geometry
57 The Average Person
58 The Poisson Distribution
59 Quaternions
60 Transcendental Numbers
61 Finding Neptune
62 Fechner-Weber Law
63 Boolean Algebra
64 Maxwell-Boltzmann
65 Defining Irrationals
66 Infinity
67 Set Theory
68 Peano Axioms
69 Simple Lie Groups
70 Statistical Techniques
Modern Mathematics
71 Topology
72 A New Geometry
73 Hilbert's 23 Problems
74 Mass Energy
75 Markov Chains
76 Population Genetics
77 Foundations of Mathematics
78 General Relativity
79 The Mathematics of Quantum Physics
80 Gbdel's Theorem
81 Turing Machine
82 Fields Medals
83 Zuse and the Electronic Computer
84 Game Theory
85 Information Theory
86 Geodesics
87 Chaos Theory
88 String Theory
89 Catastrophe Theory
90 Four-Color Theorem
91 Public Key Encryption
92 Fractals
93 The Fourth Dimension and Beyond
94 Classification of all Simple Finite Groups
95 Self-Organized Criticality
96 Fermat's Last Theorem
97 Proof by Computer
98 Millennium Problems
99 Poincare Conjecture
100 The Search for Mersenne Primes
101 Mathematics: a guide
Imponderables
The Great Mathematicians
Bibliography and Other Resources
Index
Acknowledgements
