A NEW YORK TIMES Notable Book on a perennially fascinating subject: the idea of ZERO
Charles Seife earned his BA in mathematics from Princeton University, an MS in mathematics from Yale University, and an MS in journalism from Columbia University. Trained by such mathematicians as Andrew Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, and John Conway, who invented the 'game of life', Seife has done research in probability theory, artificial intelligence, signal processing, and the visualisation of the multidimensional spaces. He has worked for the Department of Defense and is currently an American correspondent for New Scientist. He has also written for numerous other publications including Scientific American, Science, The Economist, and Wired UK.
This is one of the best-written popular science books to have come
this way for quite a while.
*Guardian*
A witty but lucid account... A must for armchair logicians.
*Focus*
A breathless tour of the 'dangerous idea' of zero.
*New Scientist*
Seife is a gifted explicator of hard science.
*Spectator*
Moves from Pythagoras to Hawking, accompanying his arguments with
well laid-out graphs. A painless way to acquire complex
knowledge.
*Catholic Herald*
This is a very light treatment of big ideas. In the first chapters, Seife, a correspondent for New Scientist, skims over the historical and intellectual development of zero, covered more thoughtfully in Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero (LJ 10/1/99). Seife then stresses the connections between zero and infinity and explains calculus, quantum mechanics, relativity, the Big Bang, and string theory to show that they depend on zero and infinity. This is much too much ground to cover when the reader is assumed not to know basic algebra, and the book's central claim becomes very weak, not saying much more than that string theory requires the system of modern mathematics. The prose style reflects Seife's occupation as a science journalist: fast-paced and colorful but repetitious, oversimplified, and exaggerated ("Not only does zero hold the secret to our existence, it will also be responsible for the end of the universe"). Recommended for larger public libraries, while smaller libraries on a budget should acquire Kaplan's book. [BOMC selection.]--Kristine Fowler, Mathematics Lib., Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
This is one of the best-written popular science books to have come
this way for quite a while. -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *
A witty but lucid account... A must for armchair logicians. * Focus
*
A breathless tour of the 'dangerous idea' of zero. * New Scientist
*
Seife is a gifted explicator of hard science. * Spectator *
Moves from Pythagoras to Hawking, accompanying his arguments with
well laid-out graphs. A painless way to acquire complex knowledge.
* Catholic Herald *
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