Hilbert - (Diseases) by Constance Reid (Paperback)

About the Book

Biography of mathematician David Hilbert.

Book Synopsis

"It presents a sensitive portrait of a great human being. It describes accurately and intelligibly on a nontechnical level the world of mathematical ideas in which Hilbert created his masterpieces. And it illuminates the background of German social history against which the drama of Hilberts life was played. Beyond this, it is a poem in praise of mathematics." -SCIENCE

From the Back Cover

If the life of any 20th century mathematician can be said to be a history of mathematics in his time, it is that of David Hilbert. To the enchanted young mathematicians and physicists who flocked to study with him in Gottingen before and between the World Wars, he seemed mathematics personified, the very air around him "scientifically electric". His remarkably prescient proposal in 1900 of twenty-three problems for the coming century set the course of much subsequent mathematics and remains a feat that no scientist in any field has been able to duplicate. When he died, Nature remarked that there was scarcely a mathematician in the world whose work did not derive from that of Hilbert. Constance Reid's classic biography is a moving, nontechnical account of the passionate scientific life of this man - from the early days in Konigsberg, when his revolutionary work was dismissed as "theology", to the golden years in Gottingen before Hitler came to power and within a few months destroyed the entire Hilbert school. The Copernicus paperback edition makes this book available to new generations of mathematicians who know the name Hilbert, which is everywhere in mathematics, but do not know the man.

Review Quotes

From the reviews:

THE BULLETIN OF MATHEMATICS BOOKS

"Originally published to great acclaim, both books explore the dramatic scientific history expressed in the lives of these two great scientists and described in the lively, nontechnical writing style of Constance Reid."