Mentes maravillosas

Which mathematician came up with a crucial concept the night before he died in a duel? Who financed his studies in mathematics and medicine through gambling and chess? Who learned wall wallpaper math from him? Ian Stewart presents the extraordinary lives and amazing discoveries of twenty-five of history's greatest mathematicians -from Archimedes and Liu Hui to Mandelbrot and Thurston- who played a major role in creating the mathematics we use today. This amazing gallery encompasses lesser-known geniuses such as Srinivasa Ramanujan and Emmy Noether, alongside the imposing figures of Muhamad al-Khuarismi (inventor of the algorithm), Fermat, Newton, Gauss, Lobachevski, Riemann (forerunner of Einstein), Poincaré , Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (possibly the first computer programmer), Gödel, and Turing. Each of these twenty-five great mathematicians is fascinating on its own, and taken together, they trace the evolution of mathematics over the course of two millennia in one dazzling story.