Here are 100 books that Man Must Measure fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a professor, I see students fascinated by science, but petrified to take a science class. This is in part because we have dehumanized science, removed the story, edited out the human, deleted the parts that allow people to connect with it. Science does not get delivered by gods, but is created by people: smart, quirky, sometimes immoral people. As a writer, my hope is to be able to reinsert life into readers’ understanding of our greatest advances. As a reader myself, I am deeply appreciative when other authors do it too.
David Hilbert was the most important mathematician at the dawn of the 20th century. In 1900, he gave the mathematical community its homework for the next 100 years setting out the list of open problems that had to be solved by 2000. While to the rest of the mathematicians, he may have appeared as their professor, he was also the class clown. As colorful and funny as he was brilliant, you cannot but come away loving this great mathematical genius.
"It presents a sensitive portrait of a great human being. It describes accurately and intelligibly on a nontechnical level the world of mathematical ideas in which Hilbert created his masterpieces. And it illuminates the background of German social history against which the drama of Hilberts life was played. Beyond this, it is a poem in praise of mathematics." -SCIENCE
I’m a mathematics professor who ended up writing the internationally bestselling novel The Death of Vishnu (along with two follow-ups) and became better known as an author. For the past decade and a half, I’ve been using my storytelling skills to make mathematics more accessible (and enjoyable!) to a broad audience. Being a novelist has helped me look at mathematics in a new light, and realize the subject is not so much about the calculations feared by so many, but rather, about ideas. We can all enjoy such ideas, and thereby learn to understand, appreciate, and even love math.
This classic rumination on the nature of mathematics is perhaps the most famous book ever written by a mathematician.
I’ve read it several times, and each time, it brings up another facet of the subject in some new light. Portions of what Hardy says ring eerily true, and seem to be part of the identity, the very DNA, that all mathematicians must surely share. Other parts seem so alien to be almost repugnant – such as his contention that most mathematics we classify as useful is ugly and inelegant.
I’d love to argue face-to-face with Hardy about this highly opinionated work of his. In the end, I suspect we’d find lots of common ground, since intrinsically, we both love mathematics so much.
A Mathematician's Apology This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition -…
If you want to know what conducting an orchestra is like, you ask a conductor. If you want to know what being a mathematician is like, you ask a mathematician. I have been studying, researching, and teaching mathematics (mainly at Cambridge but also in France and elsewhere) for a lifetime and loved (almost) every moment of it. In the words of Constance Reid, `Mathematicians are people who devote their lives to what seems to me a wonderful kind of play.'
The Scientific American columns of Martin Gardner ran for 24 years and were read by amateurs, semi-amateurs, professionals, and major mathematicians (Conway, Knuth, Diaconis...). It was the interaction with this audience (recorded in addenda) which gave these essays their special quality and will give the interested outsider a real feel for what interests mathematicians. The collected columns are being reissued by the AMA and CUP but my view that anything by Martin Gardner is worth reading is reflected in my personal library.
Martin Gardner continues to delight. He introduces readers to the Generalized Ham Sandwich Theorem, origami, digital roots, magic squares, the mathematics of cooling coffee, the induction game of Eleusis, Dudeney puzzles, the maze at Hampton Court Palace, and many more mathematical puzzles and principles. Origami, Eleusis, and the Soma Cube is the second volume in Martin Gardner's New Mathematical Library, based on his enormously popular Scientific American columns. Now the author, in consultation with experts, has added updates to all the chapters, including new game variations, mathematical proofs, and other developments and discoveries, to challenge and fascinate a new generation…
If you want to know what conducting an orchestra is like, you ask a conductor. If you want to know what being a mathematician is like, you ask a mathematician. I have been studying, researching, and teaching mathematics (mainly at Cambridge but also in France and elsewhere) for a lifetime and loved (almost) every moment of it. In the words of Constance Reid, `Mathematicians are people who devote their lives to what seems to me a wonderful kind of play.'
More mathematicians than you might expect have had eventful lives (and most of the others are grateful that they did not). Fourier, one of my mathematical heroes was twice in danger of the guillotine, played a substantial role in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, is known as one of the Fathers of Egyptology, and was the first person to write about the ‘green-house effect’. To mathematicians and physicists this is all secondary to his work on heat conduction and, of course, the Fourier series. Herevel is an excellent guide to a remarkable life. (Herevel also had a non-standard career — the ‘Herevel tip’ was instrumental in early successes against Enigma.)
As the authors of 27 hand-illustrated books, we are acutely aware of the time and skill required for good rendering. We are old-schoolers ourselves, having cut our teeth on “how-to” books before computers came into vogue. Our readers often tell us that a computer drawing does not have the same appeal and clarity as hand drawing. We are able to ‘talk’ a reader through the process of building something with our drawings. We have also found that the best illustrated books often have the best content!
We love all of David Macauley’s books. He uses hand-drawn black-and-white illustrations to describe the enormous effort and complicated processes involved in building some of the most magnificent structures in the world, from cathedrals to castles to pyramids. Cathedral was his first, and we think the best. Although intended for young readers, there are many builders, engineers, and architects that find wonder in Macauley’s work.
Readers worldwide recognize Caldecott Medal winner David Macaulay's imaginary Cathedral of Chutreaux. This critically acclaimed book has been translated into a dozen languages and remains a classic of children's literature and a touchstone for budding architects. Cathedral's numerous awards include a prestigious Caldecott Honor and designation as a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year for Macaulay's intricate pen-and-ink illustrations.
Journey back to centuries long ago and visit the fictional people of twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century Europe whose dreams, like Cathedral, stand the test of time.
I am the mother of six and a voracious journaler. I am also a novelist. Though I’ve found that the facts of family adventures are often more fascinating than fiction. I bring in-the-moment observations as well as decade-seasoned insights to the world of family life. I also love reading about other families with all their quirks and joys.
I laughed out loud as I joined this family of twelve children on cramped car trips, through childhood pranks, adolescent rebellion, and through the daily joys and growing pains of a loud and loving family. My dad is one of eleven children and reading this book reminds me of many of his stories about growing up. I especially related to the clatter of dinner time conversation centered around morse code or math games. We never did morse code but we’ve played plenty of math games and word riddles.
The #1 New York Times–bestselling classic: A hilarious memoir of two parents, twelve kids, and “a life of cheerfully controlled chaos” (The New York Times).
Translated into more than fifty languages, Cheaper by the Dozen is the unforgettable story of the Gilbreth clan as told by two of its members. In this endearing, amusing memoir, siblings Frank Jr. and Ernestine capture the hilarity and heart of growing up in an oversized family.
Mother and Dad are world-renowned efficiency experts, helping factories fine-tune their assembly lines for maximum output at minimum cost. At home, the Gilbreths themselves have cranked out twelve…
I am Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University, and have spent the past thirty years thinking/teaching/writing about algorithms. Algorithms are the really cool thing about computer science, for they form the ideas behind any interesting computer program. And algorithms turn out to be the ideas behind many interesting aspects of life that have nothing to do with computers. I have written six books on algorithms, programming, gambling, and history –including the ranking of the historical significance of all the people in Wikipedia.
Polya was a great mathematician who knew what counted (after all, he made major contributions to combinatorics, the mathematics of counting). He thought hard about what he was doing when working on problems in mathematics, developing a mental process that lead to creative breakthroughs and solutions. Polya’s problem-solving method is broadly applicable to domains other than mathematics, and this book features many nice puzzles to improve your thinking.
Algorithm design is challenging because it often requires flashes of sudden insight which seem to come out of the blue. But there is a way of thinking about problems that make such flashes more likely to happen. I try to teach this thought process in my books, but Polya got there first.
A perennial bestseller by eminent mathematician G. Polya, How to Solve It will show anyone in any field how to think straight. In lucid and appealing prose, Polya reveals how the mathematical method of demonstrating a proof or finding an unknown can be of help in attacking any problem that can be "reasoned" out--from building a bridge to winning a game of anagrams. Generations of readers have relished Polya's deft--indeed, brilliant--instructions on stripping away irrelevancies and going straight to the heart of the problem.
Having a master's degree in chemical engineering, I wasn't destined to work in the area of quantitative finance… the reason why I professionally moved to this discipline aren't worth exposing, but as a matter of fact, I've been quickly fascinated by this science, and encountered some of my favorites, such as maths and statistics, as used in the traditional activity of an engineer. And I had many opportunities of combining the knowledge and practice of financial markets with pragmatism, typically of the engineer’s education, i.e. oriented toward problem solving. In addition, I've always loved teaching, and writing books on financial markets & instruments, hence the importance I'm giving to pedagogy in professional books.
Having read or browsed many books dedicated to the mathematics of options and other derivative instruments, I unquestionably consider Neftci’s book as by far the best choice.
Starting with the fundamentals, it goes much further than a simple “introduction”, and typically fits with the needs of a “quant” specializing in options, with a good balance between pure theoretical, mathematical developments (such as Partial Differential Equations, Girsanov theorem, Markov processes, etc) and practical applications on option pricing.
An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives, Second Edition, introduces the mathematics underlying the pricing of derivatives.
The increased interest in dynamic pricing models stems from their applicability to practical situations: with the freeing of exchange, interest rates, and capital controls, the market for derivative products has matured and pricing models have become more accurate. This updated edition has six new chapters and chapter-concluding exercises, plus one thoroughly expanded chapter. The text answers the need for a resource targeting professionals, Ph.D. students, and advanced MBA students who are specifically interested in financial derivatives.
Philosophy’s core questions have always obsessed me: What is real? What makes life worth living? Can knowledge be made secure? In graduate school at the University of Virginia I was drawn to mathematically formalized approaches to such questions, especially those of C. S. Peirce and Alain Badiou. More recently, alongside colleagues at Endicott College’s Center for Diagrammatic and Computational Philosophy and GCAS College Dublin I have explored applications of diagrammatic logic, category theory, game theory, and homotopy type theory to such problems as abductive inference and artificial intelligence. Philosophers committed to the perennial questions have much to gain today from studying the new methods and results of contemporary mathematics.
Zalamea’s book is the perfect introduction and survey if you want to understand how developments in contemporary mathematics are relevant to current philosophy.
Zalamea’s own approach follows closely in the steps of Peirce, Lautman, and Grothendieck, merging pragmatism, dialectics, and sheaf theory, but he also engages the work of dozens of other key mathematicians and philosophers coming from different points of view, sometimes cursorily, always tantalizingly.
No philosopher can read this book without a quickened heartbeat and eager plans to clear shelf space for some of the many volumes of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics canvassed here by Zalamea.
A panoramic survey of the vast spectrum of modern and contemporary mathematics and the new philosophical possibilities they suggest.
A panoramic survey of the vast spectrum of modern and contemporary mathematics and the new philosophical possibilities they suggest, this book gives the inquisitive non-specialist an insight into the conceptual transformations and intellectual orientations of modern and contemporary mathematics.
The predominant analytic approach, with its focus on the formal, the elementary and the foundational, has effectively divorced philosophy from the real practice of mathematics and the profound conceptual shifts in the discipline over the last century. The first part discusses the…
I’m a historian and professor of ancient Mesopotamia. I was born in the UK but have lived in the US for decades, and from childhood I loved ancient history and archaeology (even through a five-year stint as a bass player before and during college). No matter how long the human race exists in future, we have only one shared ancient global past, the remains of which represent a completely non-renewable resource and source of inspiration. There is plenty left to discover, with much evidence already excavated and awaiting interpretation. It’s a joy to analyze and share the words and life-stories of Mesopotamians in my books—in a conversation that stretches across millennia.
Mesopotamian mathematics is a fascinating subject; their numerical system was based on 60, and the ancient thinkers were adept at many types of calculations and word problems. Hundreds of clay tablets reflect their advanced understanding of mathematical principles. Eleanor Robson explains clearly in this book how historians and mathematicians have interpreted the evidence, and she discusses not just specific mathematical texts, how they are understood, and the way ideas were expressed, but she also introduces the scribes who developed and learned it all, and even the buildings in which they worked. The book is a “social history,” as the subtitle notes, and also an intellectual adventure.
This monumental book traces the origins and development of mathematics in the ancient Middle East, from its earliest beginnings in the fourth millennium BCE to the end of indigenous intellectual culture in the second century BCE when cuneiform writing was gradually abandoned. Eleanor Robson offers a history like no other, examining ancient mathematics within its broader social, political, economic, and religious contexts, and showing that mathematics was not just an abstract discipline for elites but a key component in ordering society and understanding the world. The region of modern-day Iraq is uniquely rich in evidence for ancient mathematics because its…
