Book:Eric Temple Bell/Men of Mathematics

Subject Matter

 * History of Mathematics

Contents

 * I. Introduction
 * II. Modern Minds in Ancient Bodies: Zeno; Eudoxus; Archimedes
 * III. Gentleman, Soldier and Mathematician: Descartes
 * IV. The Prince of Amateurs: Fermat
 * V. "Greatness and Misery of Man": Pascal
 * VI. On the Seashore: Newton
 * VII. Master of All Trades: Leibniz
 * VIII. Nature or Nurture?: The Bernoullis
 * IX. Analysis Incarnate: Euler
 * X. A Lofty Pyramid: Lagrange
 * XI. From Peasant to Snob: Laplace
 * XII. Friends of an Emperor: Monge; Fourier
 * XIII. The Day of Glory: Poncelet
 * XIV. The Prince of Mathematicians: Gauss
 * XV. Mathematics and Windmills: Cauchy
 * XVI. The Copernicus of Geometry: Lobatchewsky
 * XVII. Genius and Poverty: Abel
 * XVIII. The Great Algorist: Jacobi
 * XIX. An Irish Tragedy: Hamilton
 * XX. Genius and Stupidity: Galois
 * XXI. Invariant Twins: Sylvester; Cayley
 * XXII. Master and Pupil: Weierstrass; Sonja Kovalevskaya
 * XXIII. Complete Independence: Boole
 * XXIV. The Man, Not The Method: Hermite
 * XXV. The Doubter: Kronecker
 * XXVI. Anima Candida: Riemann
 * XXVII. Arithmetic the Second: Kummer; Dedekind
 * XXVIII. The Last Universalist: Poincaré
 * XXIX. Paradise Lost?: Cantor

Critical Appraisal
Although inspiring many young people to take up the study of mathematics, including famously John Forbes Nash, its content is in many places fanciful to the point of fictional.