» God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book
Comment: I have a PhD in Mathematics so I understand the book and think it is great. Some people with a weak background in mathematics may find the book difficult.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very interesting material
Comment: The book consists of short introductions by Hawking each followed by a famous or important document. To me the introductions were at least as enjoyable and informative as the rest - to the point and interesting.
The republished material is interesting on several levels. It shows the range of interests as well as the flights of imagination possible for world class mathematicians.
WARNING: The republished material in the book (not the introductions) is printed with an extremely small font. it will be difficult to read for even those with the best eyesight. The book is good enough even with this problem to get 4 stars our of 5.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: a great physicist tells about great breakthroughs in math
Comment: To see what interests a great physicist is, to me, of great interest.

In God Created the Integers, Stephen Hawking describes not only what he sees as the key mathematical breakthroughs of history, but also the lives of those who made these breakthroughs. Both are of great interest.
In particular, Lebesgue's grounding the integral on "measure" reveals a pattern. Certain things are unmeasurable. Other things measure zero-- but still, they are something (not nothing). And certain collections, although arising from infinite architecural processes, have finite measure. As in the numbers themselves that result from integration, by the enabling component of integration-- measure-- the finite meets the infinite.

Since integration is basic to physics (for example, as the context for the Born equation of quantum mechanics) I guess after reading this book I shouldn't be surprised that Stephen Hawking would tell us about this breakthrough in very human and understandable terms.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great compendium
Comment: Great compendium of (some of) the most important works in math. I would have added some authors but I think the selection is awesome. Clearly explained and original works are well referenced.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: My son liked his Christmas gift
Comment: My son asked for this book for Christmas, so I bought it for him. Looking inside, I saw it was way over my head. But he, being a math and computer genius, loved it.

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