Of men and numbers
Subtitle: the story of the great mathematicians.
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Published: 1961
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 249
Subjects: Mathematicians -- Biography
First sentence: The names of the men who pioneered in mathematics are lost in the same ancient mists that obscure all of mankind's early history. There are no records of the cavemen who, eons ago, first conceived the idea of counting: 1,2,3,4-many. As language evolved, so did counting and very simple arithmetic. Men added 2 arrows to 3 arrows and got 5. Often several sets of numbers were used, depending on ht objects being counted. Vestiges of these multi-number systems occur even in modern usage where a couple, a pair, a brace, and a duo all mean "2." 
          Millennia went by. Hundreds of generations rose from and sank back into the earth before the spoken number evolved into a written one. At first the notation system  consisted  simply of pictures of  each object being counted- three bison painted on a cave wall recorded the number of animals a hunter had killed; four arrows scratched into a piece of bark indicated the quantity of his weapons. Even the early Egyptians used pictures of objects to show "how many." Neither the s poken nor the written number systems were as yet abstract, although pictures were the fist step in that direction, for a picture itself is not the actual object but only a symbol of it. Yet for each object being counted, a corresponding number of pictures were used. Numbers could not yet be thought of apart from the objects or pictures thereof being counted. Number was not a separate entity.
Description: When mathematics itself amy be a formidable subject for many, the lives and accomplishments of history's greatest mathematicians --from Pythagoras to Cantor --offer fascinating reading.

In this delightful and informative recounting, for example we learn Pasacal's life was abruptly changed by a family of fanatical bonesetters, how Descartes was influenced by three dreams and how the scholarly Swiss Leonhard Euler(whose famous conjecture was finally disproved in 1959, after 177 years) almost ended up in Russian navy.

Here, too Cardano, the gambler who became the sizteenth century's most fashionable doctor: Archimedes, Newton and Gauss, often considered the three greatest mathematicians of all times; Lobatchevsky, inventor of non-Euclidean geometry ; and the tragic Galois, a founder of modern higher algebra. 

In addition to a wealth of interesting and informative anecdotes, presented in a delightfully conversational style, the author offers lucid, accessible explanations of these thinker's invaluable contributions to the edifice of modern mathematical thought and to man's understanding of himself and his universe.
Notes: Includes bibliography.
Table of contents: title: Pythogora,582 B.C.(?)-502 B.C.(?); Euclid, c.300 B.C.; and Archimedes, 287 B.C. - 212 B.C.                        Cardano,1501-1576             Rene Descartes, 1596-1650             Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662                  Isaac Newton, 1642-1727      Leonhard Euler, 1707-1783                   Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1777-1855        Nicholas Lobatchesvsky, 1793-1856                   Evariste Galois, 1811-1832               Georg Cantor, 1845-1918