Dunham, William : University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Campus

William Dunham is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. After receiving his PhD from the Ohio State University in 1974, he joined the mathematics faculty at Hanover College in Indiana. He has directed a summer seminar funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities on the topic of "The Great Theorems of Mathematics in Historical Context."

Explores the "masterpieces'' of mathematics, seventeen landmarks spanning 2,300 years and representing ten mathematicians. Each of these landmarks, to some degree, changed the way the world was perceived. Each theorem is presented with a description of the state of mathematics at the time, the development of the theorem, a biographical sketch of the mathematician and an outline of the proof with explanation.

Hippocrates' Quadrature of the Lune

(ca. 440 B.C.).

Euclid's Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem

(ca. 300 B.C.).

Euclid and the Infinitude of Primes

(ca. 300 B.C.).

Archimedes' Determination of Circular Area

(ca. 225 B.C.).

Heron's Formula for Triangular Area

(ca. 75 A.D.).

Cardano and the Solution of the Cubic

(1545).

A Gem from Isaac Newton

(Late 1660s).

The Bernoullis and the Harmonic Series

(1689).

The Extraordinary Sums of Leonhard Euler

(1734).

A Sampler of Euler's Number Theory

(1736).

The Non-Denumerability of the Continuum

(1874).

Cantor and the Transfinite Realm

(1891).

Afterword.
Chapter Notes.
References.
Index.