A text for teachers, precocious students, and intellectually curious readers unafraid to tread unfamiliar territory and...
Summarizing 2,500 years of mathematics milestones and the mathematicians who made them.
Even a popularizer as skilled and prolific as Stewart (Mathematics/Univ. of Warwick; Calculating the Cosmos: How Mathematics Unveils the Universe, 2016, etc.) cannot expect general readers to fully digest his highly distilled explanations of what these significant figures did to resolve ever more complex conundrums as math advanced. The author clearly reviews Euclid and highlights the contributions of Arabic and Indian innovators in algebra and trigonometry, but things get more complicated as he turns to differential equations, three-dimensional manifolds, or multiholed tori. Thankfully, Stewart’s brief but colorful sketches of the life and times of the innovators keep the pages turning. Besides well-known figures such as Archimedes, Pierre de Fermat, Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, and Kurt Gödel, the author also discusses Évariste Galois, the algebraist killed in a duel at age 20; Georg Cantor, who was driven to depression and breakdown by critics of his ideas of higher orders of numerical infinity; and Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught Indian number theorist of phenomenal intuition. Among other biographical nuggets, we learn that Turing may not have died from self-inflicted cyanide poisoning but from inhaling fumes from other causes and that Gödel so feared being poisoned that he died of slow starvation. Stewart includes three women in his pantheon (Ada Lovelace, Sofia Kovalevskaia, and Emmy Noether) and blames centuries of cultural bias and not genes for their scant representation. In the final chapter, the author ponders what his subjects have in common. Most seem to have manifested aptitude at an early age, but otherwise, there are few shared aspects of class, character, education, or family background. One thing is certain, however: they all had a profound love for math.
A text for teachers, precocious students, and intellectually curious readers unafraid to tread unfamiliar territory and learn what mad pursuits inspire mathematicians.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-09612-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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