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Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
Simon Singh · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorPrime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
John Derbyshire · 435 pages
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Charles Seife · 248 pages
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity’s twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything. In Zero, Scie
The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics
Marcus du Sautoy · 351 pages
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century
David Salsburg · 352 pages
Discusses how statistics have changed the field of science in the twentieth century, focusing on the theories and ideas of famous scientists and thinkers.
The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe
Donal O'Shea · 304 pages
Conceived in 1904, the Poincaré conjecture, a puzzle that speaks to the possible shape of the universe and lies at the heart of modern topology and geometry, has resisted attempts by generations of mathematicians to prove or to disprove it. Despite a million-dollar prize for a solution, Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, posted his solution on the Internet instead of publishing it in a peer-
A History of π
Petr Beckmann · 204 pages
The history of pi, says the author, though a small part of the history of mathematics, is nevertheless a mirror of the history of man. Petr Beckmann holds up this mirror, giving the background of the times when pi made progress and also when it did not, because science was being stifled by militarism or religious fanaticism. The mathematical level of this book is flexible, and there is plenty for
The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
Steven H. Strogatz · 336 pages
Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, insight, and brilliant illustrations. Whether he is illuminating how often you should flip your mattress
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
Roger Penrose · 1,099 pages
Un libro definitivo e imprescindible para tener en la mano, en un solo volumen, todo el saber acumulado hasta la actualidad sobre el universo, el espacio, las leyes que lo rigen y los conceptos esenciales.
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
David Foster Wallace · 340 pages
*"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite."*—The New York Times. With a new introduction by Neal Stephenson. Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? David Foster Wallace brings his intellectual ambition and characteristic bravura style to the story of how mathematicians have struggled to understand the infinite, from the ancient Greeks to the ninete
Linked: The New Science of Networks
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi · 294 pages
A cocktail party. A terrorist cell. Ancient bacteria. An international conglomerate. All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the nations foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previoulsy thought. Grasping
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe · 312 pages
Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a
Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry
Ian Stewart · 290 pages
Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace
Leonard Mlodinow · 306 pages
Physicist/writer Mlodinow leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is a new alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology. The journey goes from Pythagoras through Gauss and
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
Albert Einstein · 158 pages
The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examina
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
James Gleick · 526 pages
From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He also provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information, including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Tur
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
Charles Petzold · 393 pages
What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries. Using everyday objects an
Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
Norbert Wiener · 212 pages
Acclaimed one of the "seminal books ... comparable in ultimate importance to ... Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill", Cybernetics was judged by twenty-seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead."--Saturday Review.
Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem
Amir D. Aczel · 153 pages
In 1995, a Princeton-based mathematician showed up at a scientific conference and dropped a bombshell. He had succeeded in deciphering one of mathematics' great secrets, one that thousands had puzzled over for the last three-and-a-half centuries: he had proven Fermat's Last Theorem in a 200-page paper, one that took seven years to write (and another year to fine tune). Fermat's Last Theorem is th
E: The Story of a Number
Eli Maor · 234 pages
The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest mathematical background, this biograp
Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
Geoffrey West · 479 pages
"From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. The former head of the Sante Fe Institute, visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term "complexity" can be misleadi
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Richard Feynman · 176 pages
Hyperspace
Michio Kaku · 359 pages
Are there other dimensions beyond our own? Is time travel possible? Can we change the past? Are there gateways to parallel universes? All of us have pondered such questions, but there was a time when scientists dismissed these notions as outlandish speculations. Not any more. Today, they are the focus of the most intense scientific activity in recent memory. In Hyperspace, Michio Kaku, author o
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
Sean Carroll · 451 pages
A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward?Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other univers