คำพูดว่าพระเจ้าสร้างจำนวนเต็มนี้เป็นคำพูดของนักคณิตศาสตร์นักตรรกศาสตร์ชาวเยอรมันเลโอโปล โครเนคเคอร์ "God made the integers; all else is the work of man." หนังสือรวบรวมงานเขียน/แปลทางคณิตศาสตร์ของนักคณิตศาสตร์ 17 คน เรียงไล่ตามลำดับเวลา ตั้งแต่ Euclid จนถึง Turing โดยผนวกประวัตินักคณิตศาสตร์แต่ละคน Stephen Hawking เป็นผู้คัดเลือก และ edit และแทรกความคิดเห็นตามจุดต่าง ๆ ช่น ตอนของ Descartes เลือก The Geometry มารวมไว้, ตอน Newton เลือก Principia เล่มแรก Of the motion of Bodies, ตอน Laplace เลือก A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, ตอน Boole เลือก An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, ตอน Cantor เลือกบทความที่ I และ II จาก Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers

Great collection of fundamental math proofs.

This book is an excellent resource for students if they want to know more about where a math concept came from. It also provides background knowledge to many of the mathematical concepts that students are going to encounter in a high school math class. From Algebra to Calculus and beyond it is an excellent tool and highly recommended!

Only read the start of this. Seems good, but you have to have a lot of time to read it as it's essentailly just a reprint of all the major works of mathematics interspersed with comments from Hawking.

Amazing but there is a doubt " Atheist " why should we read " Are rational persons are atheists? " More they go into science and rationality they rationalize Miracles. God help them

It's hard to see what Hawking intended with this book; the works are too inaccessible because of their great age (for the earlier ones) or the advanced mathematics background required (for many of the later ones) to be very enjoyable, and while they do add some historical perspective, spending a few dozen pages summarising them would probably have been more productive than spending a few hundred including translated fragments of them. Many of them are still interesting, but not 1160-pages interesting.

As a review of some of the most important mathematical breakthroughs in history, the book has some odd inclusions (I wouldn't have included Dedekind or Lebesgue, myself), some odd omissions (Pythagoras? Al-Khwārizmī, or any other Muslim mathematician?), some questionable choices of materials, and some peculiar emphases (over a hundred pages each for Euclid and Archimedes, and then Weierstrass gets seven?).

All in all, this book wasn't worth the effort of writing, and probably isn't worth the effort of reading, unless you just read the bios (which would bring this book down from 1160 pages to 120 or so; altogether more reasonable). The breakthroughs described are (mostly) important and (mostly) interesting, but there are better places to learn about them.

THE definitive book of understanding.

Anyone interested in the history and evolution of math and science should pick up this monster tome. It's not a book you're likely to read front-to-back in order, nor necessarily even be able to follow all of the copious amount of equations presented without a very solid math background. However, Hawking explains the importance of each mathematicians accomplishments, gives a solid biography for each of them, and presents some of their most important work in its original form.

I'm currently working through Laplace's work on probability. I find it challenging and slow-going at times, but highly rewarding and a great way to keep my mind vigorously engaged.

Since I'm writing a novel with a math genius as the protagonist, I find this the singularly most valuable reference in my library.

Amazing !!

Es un gran libro para entender las matemáticas y todo lo que las relaciona
Si te gustan las matemáticas este es un buen libro para ti sin embargo lo sentí un poco pesado

Interesante libro que recoge los escritos originales de los matemáticos más importantes de todos los tiempos. No se dejen llevar por el nombre de "Hawking" como autor, su participación se limita a una breve introducción biográfica de cada autor, después vienen los textos originales...

too 'technical' for me. This is a book that will probably be enjoyed by mathematicians. Seems to have some very interesting pieces, but unfortunately too much for me :-)