From Zero to Infinity: What Makes Numbers Interesting

Book Detail

Author/Editor(s): Constance Reid
Publication Date: February 4, 2006
ISBN-10: 1568812736
ISBN-13: 978-1568812731
Language: English
Edition: 5
Publisher: A K Peters, Ltd.
Size: 5.79 MB
Format: pdf

Book Description

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 each reading.

About the Author

Although not trained as a mathematician, Constance Reid is well known for her books on mathematicians and mathematics. Following the success of From Zero to Infinity, her first book, Reid went on to write: A Long Way from Euclid; Hilbert; Courant in Gottingen and New York; Neyman; The Search for E.T. Bell; Julia - a Life in Mathematics, among others.

Reviews

Upon reading this edition anew, I was struck by its superb mathematical taste."" ""I knew I was meant to spend my life loving numbers and working with them; From Zero to Infinity crucially told me that there was a large community of People of Number I could hope to join when I grew up. . . . As I got older, I continued to read From Zero to Infinity and the other influential math books I knew; . . . I was truly fortunate to have run across From Zero to Infinity when I did.

--Bruce Reznick, Notices of the AMS, February 2007

This book should be in the library of every mathematics teacher, and university faculty who prepare students to teach mathematics should also own this book.

--Murray H. Siegel, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, February 2007

Zero to Infinity is a combination of number lore, number theory, 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 each reading.

--L'Enseignement Mathématique, January 2006

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