..".a story of great mathematicians and their achievements, of practical successes and failures, and of human perfidy and generosity...this is one of the still too rare occasions in which mathematicians are shown as frail, flesh-and-blood creatures...a very worthwhile book." -CHOICE

Now in new trade paper editions, these classic biographies of two of the greatest 20th Century mathematicians are being released under the Copernicus imprint. These noteworthy accounts of the lives of David Hilbert and Richard Courant are closely related: Courant's story is, in many ways, seen as the sequel to the story of Hilbert. Originally published to great acclaim, both books explore the dramatic scientific history expressed in the lives of these two great scientists and described in the lively, nontechnical writing style of Contance Reid.

I am very pleased that my books about David Hilbert, published in 1970, and Richard Courant, published in 1976, are now being issued by Springer- Verlag in a single volume. I have always felt that they belonged together, Courant being, as I have written, the natural and necessary sequel to Hilbert- the rest of the story. To make the two volumes more compatible when published as one, we have combined and brought up to date the indexes of names and dates. U nfortu- nately we have had to omit Hermann Weyl's article on "David Hilbert and his mathematical work," but the interested reader can...

This book is the result of a suggestion made to me by Erich Lehmann of the Department of Statistics of the University of California at Berkeley. Throughout the writing of it I have enjoyed his assistance and companion ship and that of his wife, Juliet Shaffer. In the beginning, writing about a man like Neyman, who was alive and still very active, I planned to limit myself to his recollections and records and to my personal observations of him during his eighty-fifth year. It soon became apparent, however, that I would need to supplement these with the recollections of his colleagues and...

Eric Temple Bell (1883 1960) was a distinguished mathematician and a best selling popularizer of mathematics. His Men of Mathematics, still in print after almost sixty years, inspired scores of young readers to become mathematicians. Under the name of John Taine, he also published science fiction novels (among them The Time Stream, Before the Dawn, and The Crystal Horde) that served to broaden the subject matter of that genre during its early years. In The Search for E. T. Bell, Constance Reid has given us a compelling account of this complicated, difficult man who never divulged to anyone,...

From Zero to Infinity is a combination of number lore, number history, and sparkling descriptions of the simply stated but exceedingly difficult problems posed by the most ordinary numbers that first appeared in 1955 and has been kept in print continuously ever since. With the fifth edition this classic has been updated to report on advances in number theory over the last 50 years, including the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Deceptively simple in style and structure, it is a book to which the reader will return again and again, gaining greater understanding and satisfaction with...

David Hilbert was one of the truly great mathematicians of his time. His work and his inspiring scientific personality have profoundly influenced the development of the mathematical sciences up to the present time. His vision, his productive power and independent originality as a mathematical thinker, his versatility and breadth of interest made him a pioneer in many different mathematical fields. He was a unique personality, profoundly immersed in his work and totally dedicated to his science, a teacher and leader of the very highest order, inspiring and most generous, tireless and...