| "Mathematics for the Million", by Lancelot Hogben, first published
in 1937(!), has lots of math, lots of history, lots of people.
John
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| Another book that you may enjoy, "Encounter With Mathematics"
by Lars Garding (I think the name is correct). It's interesting
in that it looks at history in the context of what contemporary
mathematics is like, and fans out with good references to the
more specialist texts, so you have a place to start on a topic once
your appetite is whetted.
I've also seen a set of 3 books from MIT press, called something like
"Mathematics, its Content and Meaning" - this would also be well worth
looking for...
- Jim
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I highly recommend
"A History of Mathematics"
by Carl B. Boyer, Professor of Mathematics, Brooklyn College
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Abbreviated TOC:
"Primitive Origins", "Egypt", "Mesopotamia", "Ionia and the
Pythagoreans", "The Heroic Age", "The Age of Plato and Aristotle",
"Euclid of Alexandria", "Archimedes of Syracuse", "Apollonius of
Perga", "Greek Trigonometry and Mensuration", "Revival and Decline
of Greek Mathematics", "China and India", "The Arabic Hegemony",
"Europe in the Middle Ages", "The Renaissance", "Prelude to Modern
Mathematics", "The Time of Fermat and Descartes", "A Transitional
Period", "Newton and Leibniz", "The Bernoulli Era", "The Age of
Euler", "Mathematicians of the French Revolution", "The Time of
Gauss and Cauchy", "The Heroic Age in Geometry", "The Arithmetization
of Analysis", "The Rise of Abstract Algebra", "Aspects of the Twentieth
Century".
The book is extremely readable, entertaining, and informative.
The 1968 text I have has approximately 700 pages.
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