Number is an eloquent, accessible tour de force that reveals how the concept of number evolved from prehistoric times through the twentieth century. Tobias Dantzig shows that the development of math—from the invention of counting to the discovery of infinity—is a profoundly human story that progressed by “trying and erring, by groping and stumbling.” He shows how commerce, war, and religion led to advances in math, and he recounts the stories of individuals whose breakthroughs expanded the concept of number and created the mathematics that we know today.

About the Author

Tobias Dantzig was born in Latvia in 1884. As a young man, he was caught distributing anti-Tsar propaganda and fled to Paris, where he studied under Henri Poincar�. He moved to the United States in 1910 and took a job as a lumberjack in the forests of Oregon. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University in 1916, and taught at Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, and the University of Maryland. He died in 1956.

Joseph Mazur is Professor of Mathematics at Marlboro College where he has taught a wide range of classes in all areas of mathematics, its history and philosophy. He is the author of Euclid in the Rainforest: Discovering Universal Truth in Logic and Math.

Barry Mazur is the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. He teaches and does research in mathematics. He is the author of Imagining Numbers (especially the square root of minus fifteen).

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