Product Description

The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest background in mathematics, this biography of e brings out that number's central importance in mathematics and illuminates a golden era in the age of science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28733 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Amazon.com Review
Until about 1975, logarithms were every scientist's best friend. They were the basis of the slide rule that was the totemic wand of the trade, listed in huge books consulted in every library. Then hand-held calculators arrived, and within a few years slide rules were museum pieces.

But e remains, the center of the natural logarithmic function and of calculus. Eli Maor's book is the only more or less popular account of the history of this universal constant. Maor gives human faces to fundamental mathematics, as in his fantasia of a meeting between Johann Bernoulli and J.S. Bach. e: The Story of a Number would be an excellent choice for a high school or college student of trigonometry or calculus. --Mary Ellen Curtin

From Library Journal
Everyone whose mathematical education has gone beyond elementary school is familiar with the number known as pi. Far fewer have been introduced to e, a number that is of equal importance in theoretical mathematics. Maor (mathematics, Northeastern Illinois Univ.) tries to fill this gap with this excellent book. He traces the history of mathematics from the 16th century to the present through the intriguing properties of this number. Maor says that his book is aimed at the reader with a "modest" mathematical background. Be warned that his definition of modest may not be yours. The text introduces and discusses logarithms, limits, calculus, differential equations, and even the theory of functions of complex variables. Not easy stuff! Nevertheless, the writing is clear and the material fascinating. Highly recommended.
- Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The discovery of e (the base for natural logarithms) did much to confirm the faith--central to modern science--that the empirical world is encoded in mathematics. Indeed, today scientists and engineers rely heavily on e and its derivatives when solving numerous real-world problems. Yet many who routinely employ this powerful number know little of its history. Maor recounts the rich drama surrounding the number that emerged at the center of the investigations of some of the most brilliant thinkers of all time--Fermat and Descartes, Newton and Leibniz, Laplace and the Bernoullis, Euler and Gauss. Though the exposition inevitably requires many formulas and some abbreviated derivations, the author tries to smooth the way for general readers who do not know calculus or analytical geometry, while still conveying some sense of the imaginative daring of the pioneers who opened up these fields of mathematics. Through appendixes and footnotes, mathematicians can find their way to more rigorous and exhaustive treatment of the subject; nonspecialists can easily wend their way around the more theoretical questions while still enlarging their understanding of intellectual and cultural history. Bryce Christensen

Customer Reviews

Very entertaining
Anyone who enjoys somewhat light (but meaningful) mathematical reading would likely appreciate this wonderfully woven tale of e. The focus is on developing an intuitive appreciation for e as it relates to various aspects of mathematics. A modest knowledge of differential and integral calculus would help, though it is not essential. It is very engaging. No story about e would be complete without Euler's identity -- which relates the five most important mathematical constants: e, pi, i, 0, and 1 -- but for good measure Maor has tossed in the golden ratio as well when describing the logarithmic spiral -- as if nature itself has validated our understanding of e with a compelling artistic design that presents itself in verious natural forms. This book is one of my favorites.

Amazing minds!
This was a good book for someone who likes math and is willing to work a little. You should have had (and enjoyed at some point) a little algebra, geometry, and calculus. Even if your math is rusty like mine, you will be able to follow this book well enough. I was surprised how much of it came back to me. (I wouldn't want to be tested on it though!)

The most fascinating thing to me was the brainpower that thought this stuff up! How they could have pumped so much out of the natural logarithm (e) was simply amazing to me, things such as the elegant infinite series of fractions and continued fractions, continued exponentials, sometimes with factorials. Perhaps the most amazing thing was the totally unintuitive formula e raised to the power of the product of i and pi = -1; imagine e, i, and pi contained in one short,neat, little formula! This book is also about the history of math, how calculus was invented, and how imaginary numbers found their place in math. Fortunately for me, Eli Maor goes slow enough and skips enough of the details and the proofs to make this book readable. He also gives neat short biographies of the main characters in the history of mathematics to break the hard math up. The one that was most fascinating to me was an 18th century mathametician named Leonhard Euler (who came up with e raised to the product of pi and i = 1), whom Eli Maor called "unquestionably the Mozart of math". He is relatively unknown simply because he was bracketed in time between Newton and Galileo. I do, however, have to confess I got a bit lost near the end of the book with his dissertation on complex variables (imaginary and real). The math there was a bit too dense for me (or maybe I was too dense).

I can't figure out how e raised to the power of the product of pi and i can come out to a real number (-1) since it is about a real number raised to an imaginary power. How is that even possible? How in the world did Euler come up with the formula! Maor says he'll leave it to the reader to decide if this remarkable formula is a part of "the Creator's grand scheme".

It was also a relief to read a math book without having to be graded. That was a first for me.

Interesting enough to keep you reading
With the exception of the polar coordinates transformation equations (in which personally I felt a bit lost) - most of the book is accesible to high-school level of math. Well written, and not overbearing in math or bibliographic details.