A brief history of numbers

A brief history of numbers / Leo Corry.

The world around us is saturated with numbers. They are a fundamental pillar of our modern society, and accepted and used with hardly a second thought. But how did this state of affairs come to be? In this book, Leo Corry tells the story behind the idea of number from the early days of the Pythagore...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Corry, Leo, 1956- (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2015.
Edition:First edition.
Subjects:
Number theory > History.
Number systems.
MATHEMATICS > Algebra > Intermediate.
Number theory
History
Online Access:Click for online access
Table of Contents:
  • The system of numbers : an overview
  • Writing numbers : now and back then
  • Numbers and magnitudes in the Greek mathematical tradition
  • Construction problems and numerical problems in the Greek mathematical tradition
  • Numbers in the tradition of medieval Islam: Islamicate science in historical perspective
  • Numbers in Europe from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries
  • Number and equations in the works of Descartes, Newton and their contemporaries
  • New definitions of complex numbers in the early nineteenth century
  • "What are numbers and what should they be?" : understanding numbers in the late nineteenth century
  • Exact definitions for the natural numbers : Dedekind, Peano and Frege
  • Numbers, sets and infinity : a conceptual breakthrough at the turn of the twentieth century
  • Epilogue: numbers in historical perspective.

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