In the fog of a Paris dawn in 1832, Evariste Galois, the 20-year-old founder of modern algebra, was shot and killed in a duel. That gunshot, suggests Amir Alexander, marked the end of one era in mathematics and the beginning of another. Arguing that not even the purest mathematics can be separated from its cultural background, Alexander shows how popular stories about mathematicians are really morality tales about their craft as it relates to the world. In the eighteenth century, Alexander says, mathematicians were idealized as child-like, eternally curious, and uniquely suited to...
In the fog of a Paris dawn in 1832, Evariste Galois, the 20-year-old founder of modern algebra, was shot and killed in a duel. That gunshot, suggests ...
On August 10th, 1632, five leading Jesuits convened in a sombre Roman palazzo to pass judgement on a simple idea: that a continuous line is composed of distinct and limitlessly tiny parts. The doctrine would become the foundation of calculus, but on that fateful day the judges ruled that it was forbidden. With the stroke of a pen they set off a war for the soul of the modern world. Amir Alexander tells the story of the struggle that pitted Europe's entrenched powers against voices for tolerance and change, taking us from the bloody religious strife of the 16th century to the battlefields of...
On August 10th, 1632, five leading Jesuits convened in a sombre Roman palazzo to pass judgement on a simple idea: that a continuous line is composed o...
