Numeracy has shaped human history as much as literacy: mathematics has enabled us to measure the cosmos, control the Earth, and create all technological change. A Cultural History of Mathematics presents the first comprehensive and global history from antiquity to today. The work is divided into 6 volumes, with each volume covering the same topics, so readers can either study a period/volume or follow a topic across history. The 6 volumes cover: Antiquity (c.3000 BCE-500 CE); the Medieval Age (500-1400); the Early Modern Age (1450-1687); the Eighteenth Century (1687-1800); the Nineteenth Century (1800-1914); the Modern Age (1914-present). Themes (and chapter titles) are: everyday numeracy; practice & profession; inventing mathematics; mathematics & worldviews; describing & understanding the world; mathematics & technological change; representing mathematics. The page extent for the pack is approximately 1536pp. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors and an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index. The Cultural Histories Series A Cultural History of Mathematics is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).

Als im Jahre 1884 Edwin A. Abbotts bekannte Satire Flatland erschien, konnte er das Interesse für solche räumliche Vorstellungen wecken, die die Grenzen der herkömmlichen euklidischen Geometrie weit überschritten. Mit dem „Zauberstab“ der Analogie wies er darauf hin, wie man das Nicht-Denkbare doch verstehen und scheinbar unüberwindliche Grenzen überwinden kann. Die Sichtweisen der „neueren Geometrien“ eröffneten ungeahnte Möglichkeiten, nicht nur in der Mathematik selbst, sondern auch in bildender Kunst, Literatur und Philosophie. Die zwei vorliegenden Essays in Jenseits von Flachland zeigen, wie stark Mathematik in den kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Kontext ihrer Zeit eingebunden ist – und dass sie diesen selbst beeinflussen kann.Im ersten Essay von Klaus Volkert steht die Geschichte des vierdimensionalen Raumes und seiner Geometrie im Mittelpunkt, die zahlreiche neue Möglichkeiten eröffneten, die dreidimensionale Welt von einem „höheren“ Standpunkt aus zu betrachten. Im zweiten Essay, verfasst von David E. Rowe, geht es um die Herausforderungen, welche sich durch neuere Geometrien ergaben, die sogar merkwürdige Theaterstücke inspirierten. Eine ausführlich kommentierte Übersetzung von Edwin A. Abbotts Flatland finden Sie ebenfalls in der Reihe „Mathematik im Kontext“.

Joseph W. Dauben, a leading authority on the history of mathematics in Europe, China, and North America, has played a pivotal role in promoting international scholarship over the last forty years. This Festschrift volume, showcasing recent historical research by leading experts on three continents, offers a global perspective on important themes in this field.

Beyond Einstein: Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation, and Cosmology explores the rich interplay between mathematical and physical ideas by studying the interactions of major actors and the roles of important research communities over the course of the last century.

Joseph W. Dauben, a leading authority on the history of mathematics in Europe, China, and North America, has played a pivotal role in promoting international scholarship over the last forty years. This Festschrift volume, showcasing recent historical research by leading experts on three continents, offers a global perspective on important themes in this field.

The most famous scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein was also one of the century's most outspoken political activists. Deeply engaged with the events of his tumultuous times, from the two world wars and the Holocaust, to the atomic bomb and the Cold War, to the effort to establish a Jewish homeland, Einstein was a remarkably prolific political writer, someone who took courageous and often unpopular stands against nationalism, militarism, anti-Semitism, racism, and McCarthyism. In "Einstein on Politics," leading Einstein scholars David Rowe and Robert Schulmann gather Einstein's most important public and private political writings and put them into historical context. The book reveals a little-known Einstein--not the ineffectual and naive idealist of popular imagination, but a principled, shrewd pragmatist whose stands on political issues reflected the depth of his humanity.

Nothing encapsulates Einstein's profound involvement in twentieth-century politics like the atomic bomb. Here we read the former militant pacifist's 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany might try to develop an atomic bomb. But the book also documents how Einstein tried to explain this action to Japanese pacifists after the United States used atomic weapons to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events that spurred Einstein to call for international control of nuclear technology.

A vivid firsthand view of how one of the twentieth century's greatest minds responded to the greatest political challenges of his day, "Einstein on Politics" will forever change our picture of Einstein's public activism and private motivations."

Although she was famous as the "mother of modern algebra," Emmy Noether's life and work have never been the subject of an authoritative scientific biography. Emmy Noether - Mathematician Extraordinaire represents the most comprehensive study of this singularly important mathematician to date. Focusing on key turning points, it aims to provide an overall interpretation of Noether's intellectual development while offering a new assessment of her role in transforming the mathematics of the twentieth century.Hermann Weyl, her colleague before both fled to the United States in 1933, fully recognized that Noether's dynamic school was the very heart and soul of the famous Goettingen community. Beyond her immediate circle of students, Emmy Noether's lectures and seminars drew talented mathematicians from all over the world. Four of the most important were B.L. van der Waerden, Pavel Alexandrov, Helmut Hasse, and Olga Taussky. Noether's classic papers on ideal theory inspired van der Waerden to recast his research in algebraic geometry. Her lectures on group theory motivated Alexandrov to develop links between point set topology and combinatorial methods. Noether's vision for a new approach to algebraic number theory gave Hasse the impetus to pursue a line of research that led to the Brauer-Hasse-Noether Theorem, whereas her abstract style clashed with Taussky's approach to classical class field theory during a difficult time when both were trying to find their footing in a foreign country. Although similar to Proving It Her Way: Emmy Noether, a Life in Mathematics, this lengthier study addresses mathematically minded readers. Thus, it presents a detailed analysis of Emmy Noether's work with Hilbert and Klein on mathematical problems connected with Einstein's theory of relativity. These efforts culminated with her famous paper "Invariant Variational Problems," published one year before she joined the Goettingen faculty in 1919.

The name Emmy Noether is one of the most celebrated in the history of mathematics. A brilliant algebraist and iconic figure for women in modern science, Noether exerted a strong influence on the younger mathematicians of her time and long thereafter; today, she is known worldwide as the "mother of modern algebra." Drawing on original archival material and recent research, this book follows Emmy Noether's career from her early years in Erlangen up until her tragic death in the United States. After solving a major outstanding problem in Einstein's theory of relativity, she was finally able to join the Goettingen faculty in 1919. Proving It Her Way offers a new perspective on an extraordinary career, first, by focusing on important figures in Noether's life and, second, by showing how she selflessly promoted the careers of several other talented individuals. By exploring her mathematical world, it aims to convey the personality and impact of a remarkable mathematician who literally changed the face of modern mathematics, despite the fact that, as a woman, she never held a regular professorship. Written for a general audience, this study uncovers the human dimensions of Noether's key relationships with a younger generation of mathematicians. Thematically, the authors took inspiration from their cooperation with the ensemble portraittheater Vienna in producing the play "Diving into Math with Emmy Noether." Four of the young mathematicians portrayed in Proving It Her Way - B.L. van der Waerden, Pavel Alexandrov, Helmut Hasse, and Olga Taussky - also appear in "Diving into Math."

Der mathematische Intuitionismus war die Schoepfung des niederlandischen Mathematikers L. E. J. Brouwer, der damit am Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts eine konstruktive Neubegrundung der Mathematik anstiess. Dieses Buch enthalt drei Arbeiten Brouwers aus den 1920er-Jahren, die seine Ansichten und Methoden in ausgereifter Form wiedergeben, sowie Kommentare dazu. Teil I besteht aus seinen im Jahre 1927 gehaltenen Berliner Gastvorlesungen, die die Ouverture zu einem erweiterten und vertieften Intuitionismus darstellen. Teil II entstammt einer geplanten aber unvollendeten Monographie uber die Neubegrundung der Theorie der reellen Funktionen. Teil III bringt abschliessend Brouwers Wiener Vortrag "Mathematik, Wissenschaft und Sprache", in dem er auf Fragen zur philosophischen Grundlage des Intuitionismus einging. Zusammengenommen geben diese drei Texte ein Gesamtbild von Brouwers intuitionistischen Auffassungen zum Hoehepunkt des Grundlagenstreits in der Mathematik.