Taming the Infinite The Story of Mathematics

About this book

From ancient Babylon to the last great unsolved problems, Ian Stewart brings us his definitive history of mathematics. In his famous straightforward style, Professor Stewart explains each major development - from the first number systems to chaos theory - and considers how each affected society and changed everyday life forever. Maintaining a personal touch, he introduces all of the outstanding mathematicians of history, from the key Babylonians, Greeks and Egyptians, via Newton and Descartes, to Fermat, Babbage and Godel, and demystifies maths' key concepts without recourse to complicated formulae. Written to provide a captivating historic narrative for the non-mathematician, "A Babylonian Made My Blackberry" is packed with fascinating nuggets and quirky asides, and contains 100 illustrations and diagrams to illuminate and aid understanding of a subject many dread, but which has made our world what it is today.

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Biography

Professor Ian Stewart is a world renowned populariser of mathematics. In 1995 he was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Medal for furthering the public understanding of science. He has been awarded the 1998 Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics in the USA, the 2000 Gold Medal of the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, and the 2002 Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He is the author of over 20 popular science and mathematics titles including Does God Play Dice?, Nature's Numbers (shortlisted for the 1996 Rhone-Poulenc Prize), Life's Other Secret and Flatterland, which was in the top 20 Bestseller List in the USA. Professor Stewart is the mathematics consultant for New Scientist, and has been a consultant for Encyclopaedia Britannica. From 1990 to 2001 he wrote the 'Mathematical Recreations' column in Scientific American. He is an active research mathematician with over 160 published papers and is currently Professor of Mathematics at Warwick University where he is Director of the Mathematics Awareness Centre. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001.