God created the integers

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

From e-commerce to flying in airplanes and spacecraft, mathematics enables almost every aspect of our lives in this post-industrial age. But exactly what are the areas of mathematics that make these things possible? And just what was it that made someone sit up and think, 'I must solve this!' In the follow-up volume to the best-selling On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy, world-renowned author and physicist Stephen Hawking presents 31 landmarks of mathematical thought. From basic geometry through the theory of transfinite numbers, this comprehensive volume traces the work of 17 mathematicians over 2,500 years. Each chapter is laid out in an accessible format: --A biography of each mathematician which discusses the significance of the mathematical research --The full proof of the work, reproduced from the original publication And, in addition, three significant results are translated, for the first time, into English.Hawking posits that, if the wonders of the ancient world were physical (like the pyramids), then the wonders of our world are the works of the intellect. This volume gathers some of the brightest minds in one place and discusses the influences on and impact of their work. The 17 mathematicians included in this work: Euclid, Archimedes, Diophantus, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Pierre Simon de Laplace, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, George Boole, Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, Karl Weierstrass, Richard Julius Wilhelm Dedekind, Georg Cantor, Henri Lebesgue, Kurt Godel, Alan Mathison Turing.