Reviews for The Library of American Biography (v. 4)

The average rating for The Library of American Biography (v. 4) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-23 00:00:00 Mark Hansen I liked this book very much

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-03 00:00:00 Donald Vogel (3.0) A history of the Riemann Hypothesis, as translated by a mathematician I've often regretted never having taken 'real' math (calculus, linear algebra, diffeq all seem like applied math to me), so there's a lot that I don't know that I wish I did. I was kind of hoping that I'd gain a better understanding of one of the most famous unresolved problems in mathematics by reading this. However, I get the feeling (from the sections that I followed well) that in translating math into prose, a little understanding is lost, and you kind of need to already understand the topic well to properly interpret his presentation. My hyperbolic geometry is a little fuzzy, shall we say, so much of the latter history of the Riemann Hypothesis was a rough qualitative understanding at best. But I did enjoy the early history quite a bit. Definitely makes mathematicians look like pretty cool guys (and girls, though I don't think there were (m)any in the narrative. :( ). I'm sure many of you smarter than I out there can get a lot more out of this book. I guess I would've appreciated at least a few Greek symbols and proofs in there for me... ;)