Description
A tour of the creative side of mathematics describes the first use of imaginary numbers in sixteenth-century Italy and the subsequent two-hundred-year effort to perfect the process, citing the works and writings of key Renaissance thinkers. Reprint.
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Barry Mazur invites lovers of poetry to make a leap into mathematics. Through discussions of the role of the imagination and imagery in both poetry and mathematics, Mazur reviews the writings of the early mathematical explorers and reveals the early bafflement of these Renaissance thinkers faced with imaginary numbers. Then he shows us, step-by-step, how to begin imagining these strange mathematical objects ourselves.
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