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| Unknown Quantity is a history of algebra for ordinary (i.e. not especially mathematical) readers. I have tried to cover the entire history of the subject, from 1800 B.C. down to the present day, describing all the main lines of development. From the Introduction: This is not a textbook. I hope only to show what algebraic ideas are like, how the later ones developed from the earlier ones, and what kind of people were responsible for it all, in what kind of historical circumstances. The picture "well" at the center of the book shows the following persons. Otto Neugebauer (1899-1900) Hypatia (c.370-415) Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) François Viète (1540-1603) René Descartes (1596-1650) Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Gottfried von Leibniz (1646-1716) Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) Paolo Ruffini (1765-1822) Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857) Niels Abel (1802-1829) Évariste Galois (1811-1832) Arthur Cayley (1821-1895) Ludwig Sylow (1832-1918) Camille Jordan (1838-1922) Sir William R. Hamilton (1805-1865) Hermann Grassmann (1809-1877) Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926) Julius Plücker (1801-1868) Sophus Lie (1842-1899) Felix Klein (1849-1925) Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) Eduard Kummer (1810-1893) Richard Dedekind (1831-1916) David Hilbert (1862-1943) Emmy Noether (1882-1935) Solomon Lefschetz (1884-1972) Oscar Zariski (1899-1986) Saunders Mac Lane (1909-2005) Alexander Grothendieck (1928-) Of course, many other algebraists are covered in the book. I had to make a selection for the "well." |
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