The Language of Mathematics: The Stories behind the Symbols

A marvelous compendium of mathematical symbols and their fascinating historiesGalileo famously wrote that the book of nature is written in mathematical language.The Language of Mathematics is a wide-ranging and beautifully illustrated collection of short, colorful histories of the most commonly used symbols in mathematics, providing readers with an engaging introduction to the origins, evolution, and conceptual meaning of each one. In dozens of lively and informative entries, Raúl Rojas shows how today’s mathematics stands on the shoulders of giants, mathematicians from around the world who developed mathematical notation through centuries of collective effort.He tells the stories of such figures as al-Khwarizmi, René Descartes, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Karl Weierstrass, Sofia Kovalevskaya, David Hilbert, and Kenneth Iverson.Topics range from numbers and variables to sets and functions, constants, and combinatorics.Rojas describes the mathemat