A History of Mathematics, Second Edition 2nd Edition

I used this to complete my Masters in Math and it meet my expections. The book was in great shape and I had no problem using it.

I picked up this and Burton's similarly named book, and I just wanted to make a few comments and comparisons of the two.First off, both are excellent reads, and although they cover the same subject they approach it in two different manners. Boyer's text takes the style of a history book to approach the topic. It often focuses on the people and on the time period, commenting on political/cultural going-on. Its an enjoyable book to read, almost in the sense of reading a novel. Usually the mathematics is brought up in the text, but most of the proofs and derivations are often glossed over. Possible many of those mathematical details were in the questions that are no longer at the end of the chapters. But I found missing those details to be somewhat frustrating.Conversely Burton takes the approach of a mathematics textbook that follows the story line of history. Its filled with proofs and examples, but isn't quite as rich in historical content. Each chapter ends with numerous "homework" problems, often times relating to specific solutions to a problem found by different mathematicians.Both are excellent books, but depending on your personal taste and interests you may prefer one approach over the other. If you are looking to sit down and work through historical mathematical problems, Burton is probably right for you. If you want to cozy up and imagine what life and thought was like throughout different times in civilization, Boyer is probably your answer.Hope this is helpful.

I first bought the firt edition about 25 years ago when I was still a matriculation student preparing the examination to university. This book has been with me for more than one fourth of a decade. I also own the second edition of the same book.It is a pity that the new author did not take the opportunity to expand the book to a much wider scale. ( what I mean is not to a encycoplaedic but at least expand the history of mathematics in the 20 the century. Now back to the book. What makes this book different other ones, I think it is the historical intuition of Boyer makes this book eternal. Some book arrange the content chronologically and somes book arrange the content according to the topics. However, Boyer cleverly combined that two . Also, he also extinctly discuss the topics proportional to their importance in the history. There is not too much mathematics andthere is not too few mathematics, Just a few words to describe that is " that book is really well balanced " and gives you everything and also the range of audience is wide, coupled with the very very reasonable price, it is the book on mathematical history who are interested should own one.

The first edition of this book was published in 1968. In the preface to the first edition, Carl Boyer mentions some other books about the history of mathematics and why he thinks it is necessary to write just another one. The most important reason for him is strict adherence to chronological arrangement and a stronger emphasis on historical elements. From my point of view, this aim is (at once) the strength and the weakness of the book. In this single volume of more than 700 pages, the book supplies you with so much detailed historical facts and numbers that it really deserves to be called "A History Of Mathematics". But soon after starting to read the book, I lost interest in reading it. Why was it so boring to read facts and even more facts ? The wealth of material alone does not answer the questions about the history of mathematical ideas.But Boyer also supplied the solution to this problem. Among the books he recommends in the preface of the first edition is a much shorter book by Howard Eves (Foundations and Fundamental Concepts Of Mathematics, ISBN 0-486-69609-X). Eves' book emphasizes the historical development of the most important ideas and methods through more than 2000 years. After reading Eves' book, you can return to Boyer's book and you will appreciate the wealth of details much more because your mind is equipped with a guideline.There is one other fact worth mentioning about the book. The avaiable second edition has been revised by Uta C. Merzbach and Isaac Asimov has written a foreword. Merzbach left the first 22 chapter virtually unchanged. The chapters about more recent developments have been expanded. In revising the references and the bibliography, Merzbach replaced Boyer's references (often non-English sources) by works in English. That is good for the English-speaking readers, but is it also good for people who are interested in the history of mathematics (which mostly took place in Europe: Greece, Italy, France, Germany) ? The second major change Merzbach made was dropping the exercises. For a history book, this was probably the right decision. But in Eves' book (focused on the development of ideas), the exercises are a valuable means of deepening the understanding of the era and its problems.To whom can I recommend this book ? I recommend this book to the initiated readers. If you have never heard about the axiomatic method, you should probably first read Eves' book and then return to this one.

One of my wife's favorite books.So going with her opinion and her "You have to log on right now and buy me another, I can't find mine!" I'm going to say this is 5 star.I should read it one of these days. I sort of lost interest in reading math books after trying Gödel, Escher, Bach, which turned out to be rather dry for a 6-8 year old.

Written in historical perspective of math. It was very interesting!

lengthy, well-rounded. as "wet" (not dry) as it can be without loosing its professionalism and keeping with subject (it's math history, not an epic).inference by reader can be made toward history of cultures, cultural anthropology, origin of numbers to modern day math.

As advertised