Significant Figures (book)

2017 nonfiction book

Significant Figures
The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians

Front cover

Author| Ian Stewart
Language| English
Genre| Non-fiction
Publisher| Basic Books

Publication date

| September 12, 2017
Publication place| United States
Media type| Hardcover
Pages| 303
ISBN| 0465096123

Significant Figures: The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians is a 2017 nonfiction book by British mathematician Ian Stewart FRS CMath FIMA, published by Basic Books.[1] In the work, Stewart discusses the lives and contributions of 25 figures who are prominent in the history of mathematics.[2] The 25 mathematicians selected are: Archimedes, Liu Hui, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, Madhava of Sangamagrama, Gerolamo Cardano, Pierre de Fermat, Isaac Newton, Euler, Fourier, Gauss, Lobachevsky, Galois, Ada Lovelace, Boole, Riemann, Cantor, Sofia Kovalevskaia, Poincaré, Hilbert, Emmy Noether, Ramanujan, Gödel, Turing, Mandelbrot, and Thurston.[3]

## Reception

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In Kirkus Reviews, it was written that "even a popularizer as skilled and prolific as Stewart cannot expect general readers to fully digest his highly distilled explanations of what these significant figures did to resolve ever more complex conundrums as math advanced." However, the reviewer praised Stewart's sketches of the lives and times of the innovators. The book was described as "a text for teachers, precocious students, and intellectually curious readers unafraid to tread unfamiliar territory".[4]

## See also

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* In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World

## References

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1. ^ Stewart, Ian; Basic Books (2017). Significant Figures: the lives and work of great mathematicians. New York: Basic Books. p. 303\. ISBN 978-0-465-09612-1. OCLC 1030547312.
2. ^ Hunacek, Mark (22 September 2017). "Review of Significant Figures by Ian Stewart". MAA Reviews, Mathematical Association of America.
3. ^ Bultheel, Adhemar (20 July 2017). "Review of Significant Figures". European Mathematical Society.
4. ^ "Significant Figures: The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians". Kirkus Reviews. 15 July 2017. Retrieved 6 January 2024.

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