Stefano Male. Roma, Italy

Looking forward to reading it. It will take me quite some time! (over a thousand pages of heavy reading). I will let you guys know.

Descartes is a fascinating person and certainly a genius but you would not know from this book. I read it thinking to read about his secret notebook, of which I did not know much, I admit, only to find myself reading a quick summary of Descartes biography. Only a tiny bit of the last part of the book is concerned with the secret notebook, about which the author fails to explain what is so earth-shattering about it. It was only interesting for me to find out that apparently Descartes had anticipated Euler by about 100 years in one of his famous results (V-F+E=2), but after reading around a bit more it seems that Descartes did describe a result which is equivalent to Euler's but his train of though was different. All in all, it seems a sloppy book. ... (continue)

The subject of the book is something I often thought about, so when I heard of the book I knew I wanted to read it. This summer I chanced on a copy at a local bookstore and bought it. I was disappointed. It is a good book about the environment and the dangers it is under, but only rarely it does discuss the topic of the title: a thought experiment of how the world would evolve after we are gone. How long would the signs of our passing would be wiped out? A long time, is the only disappointing answer I can get from this book. ... (continue)

Symmetry is one of the most important concepts in mathematics and one of the most "interdisciplinary". It is a topic that it has always fascinated me and was expecting a lot from this book. I had read other books by Ian Stewart, especially his well known book on Galois Theory. Stewart delivers again an interesting book that tells us the story of symmetry through the lives of the men that created this mathematics. The book goes through the story of the solution of algebraic equations up to the fantastic work of E. Galois and, later, Sophus Lie. New was for me the story of life of W. Killing, of whose work I was aware but had underestimated. Stewart does not limit himself to mathematics but naturally continues his tale through 20th century physics (relativity, quanta) up to modern TOE and E. Witten. The book is fun to read and I recommend it. My only complaint is that I was expecting, knowing Stewart ability as a mathematician, more of a math book rather than a biogarphy book, along the lines of the book "Fearless Symmetry", also in my shelf. Perhaps this will have to wait for a future book by Stewart or someone else. I also found important that the author gives due credit to the Italian Paolo Ruffini in the story of solution of algebraic equations. I had the feeling that his contribution had been ignored, except in Italy. ... (continue)

I picked up this book in hope to get some new ideas to present a Calculus course for liberal art students, which are often students that do not appreciate mathematics. Perhaps a humanities student would like this book more than I did. Calculus is a wonderful subject, a milestone of human thought, and clearly the author agrees with me here. However, I was bored stiff by the exceedingly flowery prose. Such a style is, in my opinion, a big hurdle to the understanding of the subject. For these reasons I would have assigned only one star to this book. In the end I decided to give two stars for two reasons: first, the subject matter is still well worthy the effort of reading the book, second, and more important, I realize that it might be just my professional habit as a mathematician to use only meaningful words, carefully selected to convey a precise meaning: no more no less, that makes me hate his writing style so much. Perhaps, however, liberal art students would find it more congenial and maybe even attractive. With this doubt I gave it two stars. ... (continue)

The book is enjoyable. It is aimed at readers with a suitable math background and it is not for a general reader. The author does an excellent job in outlining the story of the constant gamma, and along the way he illustrates the many applications of it. The book touches upon the history of logarithms, the harmonic series, the zeta and gamma functions, to end with the Riemann Hypothesis. The book contains some useful appendices, with some technical background, and a good list of references. ... (continue)

This book is a brief overview of a tiny sample of Euler boundless mathematical production. Dunham does an excellent job. There are eight chapters each dedicated to a different topic: Number Theory, where Euler work about perfect numbers is explained; Logarithms, Infinite Series, Analytic Number Theory, probably the most amazing subject, Complex Variables, Geometry (Euler Line), and my favorite: Combinatorics and the theory of integer partitions. The level is for an audience with some mathematical background. I recommend it for all those Euler aficionados out there. ... (continue)