Monday, May 28, 2018

Book review: Significant figures by Ian Stewart

Significant Figures: The Lives and Works of Great Mathematicians does what it attempts to do about as well as it could. Whether that is "good enough" depends on what you want.

Stewart's goal here was to briefly cover what the subtitle says about a range of mathematicians from various eras. He does not include anyone who is still alive and does not claim to cover the greatest mathematicians - this precludes a lot of arguments about who is included and not. He ranges from Archimedes to William Thurston. 

In each short chapter, Stewart summarizes what is known about the life of the person and tries to give a sense of the contribution that he or she made to mathematics.  The problem, especially in some of the later chapters, is that understanding the contributions requires a lot of background math. Stewart is writing for a lay audience - people who may have taken some math in college, but not professional mathematicians  He has a lot of experience doing this and he is reasonably successful, but if you are expecting a lot of deep mathematical results, you may be disappointed.

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