The History of Mathematics: An Introduction

by David M. Burton

Book Overview

A full account of how mathematics has developed over the past 5000 years, this text is basically chronological. It begins with the origin of mathematics in the great civilizations of antiquity and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070094659
• ISBN13: 9780070094659
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 700 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 8.2" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The History of Mathematics

Happy customer. Received the book promptly and a resonable price compared to the campus bookstore.

Great Historical Book of Mathematics

I really love this book! I highly recommend it. I haven't encountered any other that has come close to this book. The minute I got this book I fell in love with it and I was reading it everyday. The problems at the end of the chapters are so cool. When I did a course in the History of Mathematics we used Boyer and that book is so boring! I really don't like history, but Burton makes it much more interesting. I would recommend this book for a course any day in the history and development of mathematics for those who have had some experience with mathematical proofs. Burton did a wonderful job on this book!

Like New

The book arrived in time for my class, and in almost perfect condition!Excellent Transaction!

Interesting reading

I haven't read much on this subject, but I enjoyed this book. The description above says that it's designed for college juniors and seniors, and many of the technical details really will require that level of mathematical maturity. However, there is enough of what the author calls an emphasis on the "bibliographical element" that much of it would be interesting to read through only skimming the technical parts. The author also tries to explain why progress was made at certain times in history but not at others.The scope is relatively comprehensive: spanning from archeological finds that suggest early numbers systems to early twentieth century work in countability and set theory.The text itself reminded me quite a bit of my old high school history books -- readable but a little slow-paced at times. More interesting, though, are the problems at the end of every section -- problems that require the use of ideas and techniques from the time period being described. The author suggests these exercises as a good way to learn both mathematics and history, but they can be safely skipped.Just a single complaint: the book seems to have a slight slant toward Western mathematics: early Greeks, Europeans from the middle ages, modern Americans recieve the bulk of the attention while there is a single ten-page section entitled "Mathematics in the Near and Far East". While not a fatal flaw (it is of course true that most of modern mathematics has its roots in the West), I would have liked to see a more balanced account.

Easy to learn about the history of Math.

I got a lot of information from this book. It has easy to follow explation about the therom.