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"You should always believe what you read in the newspapers, for that makes them more interesting."
- Rose Macauley
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ZIN Product Number: 10194102
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| | | |  | | | Product Details
 Format: Paperback, 232 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691058547
Release Date: Jan 4, 2002
Average Reader Review:  (Based on 4 reviews.)
| |  | | | In Brief
This is the history of the number which is the base for natural logarithms from the work of John Napier in seventeenth-century Scotland through the nineteenth century. Bibliography. Index.
| | | | From The Publisher
The story of [pi] has been told many times, both in scholarly works and in popular books. But its close relative, the number e, has fared less well: despite the central role it plays in mathematics, its history has never before been written for a general audience. The present work fills this gap. Geared to the reader with only a modest background in mathematics, the book describes the story of e from a human as well as a mathematical perspective. In a sense, it is the story of an entire period in the history of mathematics, from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, with the invention of calculus at its center. Many of the players who took part in this story are here brought to life. Among them are John Napier, the eccentric religious activist who invented logarithms and - unknowingly - came within a hair's breadth of discovering e; William Oughtred, the inventor of the slide rule, who lived a frugal and unhealthful life and died at the age of 86, reportedly of joy when hearing of the restoration of King Charles II to the throne of England; Newton and his bitter priority dispute with Leibniz over the invention of the calculus, a conflict that impeded British mathematics for more than a century; and Jacob Bernoulli, who asked that a logarithmic spiral be engraved on his tombstone - but a linear spiral was engraved instead! The unifying theme throughout the book is the idea that a single number can tie together so many different aspects of mathematics - from the law of compound interest to the shape of a hanging chain, from the area under a hyperbola to Euler's famous formula e[superscript i[pi]] = -1, from the inner structure of a nautilus shell to Bach's equal-tempered scale and to the art of M. C. Escher. The book ends with an account of the discovery of transcendental numbers, an event that paved the way for Cantor's revolutionary ideas about infinity. No knowledge of calculus is assumed, and the few places where calculus is used are fully exp
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 | | | | | Number of Reviews: 4 Average Rating:
Remarkable!
-- A reviewer, a 22-year old mathematician, April 17, 2000
Remarkable!
-- A reviewer, a 22-year old mathematician, April 17, 2000
This books dispels the mystery of 'e'
-- Satheesh Makkapati, engineer, March 7, 2000
This books dispels the mystery of 'e'
-- Satheesh Makkapati, engineer, March 7, 2000
| | | | The Reader's Catalog
"Maor wonderfully tells the story of e. The chronological history allows excursions into the lives of people involved with the development of this fascinating number. Maor hangs this story on a string of people stretching from Archimedes to David Hilbert. And by presenting mathematics in terms of the humans who produced it, he places the subject where it belongs--squarely in the centre of the humanities"--Nature
| |  | | | | Preface | | | 1 | John Napier, 1614 | 3 | | 2 | Recognition | 11 | | 3 | Financial Matters | 23 | | 4 | To the Limit, If It Exists | 28 | | 5 | Forefathers of the Calculus | 40 | | 6 | Prelude to Breakthrough | 49 | | 7 | Squaring the Hyperbola | 58 | | 8 | The Birth of a New Science | 70 | | 9 | The Great Controversy | 83 | | 10 | e[superscript x]: The Function That Equals its Own Derivative | 98 | | 11 | e[superscript theta]: Spira Mirabilis | 114 | | 12 | (e[superscript x] + e[superscript -x])/2: The Hanging Chain | 140 | | 13 | e[superscript ix]: "The Most Famous of All Formulas" | 153 | | 14 | e[superscript x + iy]: The Imaginary Becomes Real | 164 | | 15 | But What Kind of Number Is It? | 183 | | App. 1. Some Additional Remarks on Napier's Logarithms | 195 | | App. 2. The Existence of lim (1 + 1/n)[superscript n] as n [approaches] [infinity] | 197 | | App. 3. A Heuristic Derivation of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus | 200 | | App. 4. The Inverse Relation between lim (b[superscript h] - 1)/h = 1 and lim (1 + h)[superscript 1/h] = b as h [approaches] 0 | 202 | | App. 5. An Alternative Definition of the Logarithmic Function | 203 | | App. 6. Two Properties of the Logarithmic Spiral | 205 | | App. 7. Interpretation of the Parameter [phi] in the Hyperbolic Functions | 208 | | App. 8. e to One Hundred Decimal Places | 211 | | Bibliography | 213 | | Index | 217 |
| |  | | | Find similiar books in these subject areas:
All Topics > Science > Mathematics > History
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| | | | | | Keywords
e (The number), e (The number), Science/Mathematics, History Of Mathematics, Mathematics, Number Theory, History & Philosophy
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