Jane Muir

1191. Of Men and Numbers, by Jane Muir (read 22 Oct 1972) This is a collection of the lives of 12 great mathematicians and I found it absorbing though I never took a math course after high school. The 12: Pythagorus, Euclid, Archimedes, Girolamo Cardano ((1501-1576) (gave first clear picture of negative numbers, first recognized existence of negative roots, and made the first note of imaginary numbers); Descartes; Pascal; Isaac Newton; Leonhard Euler, Carl Friedrich Gauss (1770-1855) (one of the greatest mathematicians), Nicholas Lobatchevsky (1793-1856), Evaristo Galois, Georg Cantor (1845-1918) I enjoyed this book a lot and if you don't recognize any name your friendly encyclopedia (Google) will enlighten you, I'm sure. (This is before Wikipedia but now you should use Wikipedia, of course.)… (mehr)