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A Strange Wilderness: The Lives Of The Great Mathematicians (2011)

by Amir D. Aczel(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1402785844 (ISBN13: 9781402785849)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Sterling

review 1: After reading most of Aczel's oeuvre, this book a great excerpt of his longer books on specific aspects of math history. Each chapter covers a short time period and the stories behind the major figures in mathematics are well fleshed out compared to their novel-length treatments. There's also many more illustrations compared to the longer works. Although most of the book was review for me, I appreciated the additional sections on early Arab and Chinese mathematicians, which were touched on in other works, but not completely developed. It was also nice to have a whole overarching understanding of the entire history of mathematics at once instead of getting it in little chunks. Would definitely recommend as a source for middle and high-school students tasked with preparing b... morerief biographies or for anyone interested in knowing more about the history behind the field. As always, Aczel's technical writing is fairly accessible for the layperson, so don't be frightened off by learning new concepts!
review 2: Ordinarily, I like such books, and have read quite a few of them. However, I found this one a little on the lifeless side -- too much a short description of facts which left me not much impressed. I've read quite a few books on the history of mathematics (both specific and general) that were much better than this one, so I'm trying to figure out what the difference was. Here are my conclusions:1) The descriptions were a little too cold and purely informative to me. They didn't have much life to them.2) Unlike some other reviews of this book I've read, I felt that the book lacked enough detail on the mathematics that the characters were responsible for. (Some of the other reviews said that they couldn't follow the math, which surprised me because what was covered was pretty elementary, and lacked detail.) The other books I'd read had a more balanced approach -- often alternating chapters of history with the math (albeit not in great detail -- these were all laymen's books)3) There were some odd omissions -- the most obvious to me was Bernhard Riemann, who was mentioned but was not given the same coverage as others. Also, while the relatively recent solution of Fermat's Last Theorem was mentioned, I would have thought that it merited a little more coverage -- although perhaps Andrew Wiles, the major contributor to that solution may not yet be considered one of the great mathematicians.4) I did like the fact that this book contained images of various kinds (one common shortcoming of such books is that they often rely too much on just text, with minimal visual aids). While there were some pictures of mathematical items, I felt that there were not enough of these -- but that would have required more text about the math, in order to explain it.5) This book seems to end rather abruptly. Surely some kind of summary would have been appropriate?This said, the book is an easy read. The author, Amir Aczel does have a pleasant style. less

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