From zero to infinity: what makes numbers intersting
By, Reid, Constance
Publisher: A.K. Peters
Class No.: 510 REI
Accession No.: 017020
Year: 2006
Pages: 200 p.

Of the week: 24th Spet. to 29th Sept., 2007

What makes numbers interesting? The subtitle of this beautiful book is the motivation, map, and message of its 188-page journey from zero to infinity. With concise insight, Reid takes the digits from 0 to 9 as chapter titles and starting points of voyages into the history and deep concepts of modern mathematics.

You may be disappointed if you only want a book telling you interesting things about the numbers themselves. The number lore, for example "The Romans attributed the number six to the goddess of love," is incidental to the main themes: patterns, problems, and propositions associated with numbers, and the passion with which we have been attracted to them for thousands of years. (Reid stresses the antiquity of mathematical thought with frequent praise for the ancient Greeks.) Each digit, as well as the two numbers ℵ0 and e, is used to introduce at least one new mathematical concept. Thus armed, a pleasing number of theorems can be introduced. Some are proved in the book, some require an undergraduate degree in mathematics, and some are as yet unproved and here stated with a tone of challenge to the keen reader.

This book is challenging: no spoonfeeding of easy concepts and fashionable analogies here. The book conveys the beauty of numbers and the theories we build around them with as much detail as possible, while encouraging the enthused reader to learn more themselves. Each line must be read carefully because not a word is used needlessly. This effort is repaid: each chapter could be the equivalent of a great mathematics teacher in its potential to excite a new generation of people about mathematics.