Mathematics: Queen and Servant Science

8vo (20.5 cm), XXII, 437 pp. Publisher's cloth, gilt-lettered spine (binding slightly rubbed and dusted, fore-edge stained, paper somewhat toned). A wide-ranging and vivid survey of mathematics by one of its most gifted popularisers, combining Bell's two earlier books--The Queen of the Sciences and The Handmaiden of the Sciences--into a single expanded volume. True to its title, the book explores mathematics in both its pure, self-sufficient splendour and its indispensable role in the physical sciences. Bell ranges freely across the entire landscape of the subject: from common algebra and the breaking of mathematical rules, through group theory, geometry, topology, and abstract algebra, to the calculus of variations, differential equations, waves and vibrations, probability, and the nature of the infinite. Throughout, he weaves in the history of mathematics and the personalities of its creators--from Pythagoras and Archimedes to Gauss, Riemann, Galois, Maxwell, and Gödel--bringing the subject alive for the non-specialist without sacrificing intellectual seriousness. Written with Bell's characteristic wit and enthusiasm, and aimed at the curious general reader rather than the professional mathematician, the book makes a compelling case that mathematics is simultaneously one of humanity's greatest intellectual achievements and its most powerful tool for understanding the physical world.…