Text
The Mathematics of The Heavens And The Earth, The Early History of Trigonometry
This book delivers information on the ancient heavens, the precursors, in the era of Alexandrian Greece, in India, In the tradition of Islam, and in the European Countries to 1550 after the crusade.
The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth is the first major history in English of the origin and early development of trigonometry. Glen Van Brummelen identifies the earliest known trigonometric precursors in ancient Egypt, Babylon,, and Greece, and he examines the revolutionary discoveries of Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer believed to have been the first to make systematic use of trigonometry in the second century.
"There does not seem to have been a book-length history of trigonometry in English begore this fine book. Van Brummelen takes us from the unnamed Egyptians and Babylonians who created trigonometry to the subject's first few centuries in Europe. In between, he deftly traces how it was studied by the astronomers Hipparchus and Ptolemy in classical Greece, and later by a host of scholars in India and the Islamic world."
- John H. Conway, coauthor of The Book of Numbers.
"This book is the first detailed history of trigonometry in more than half a century, and it far surpasses any ealier attempts. The Mathematics of the Heaven and the Earth is an extremely important contribution to scholarship. It will be the definitive history of trigonometry for years to come. There is nothing like this out there."
- Victor J. Katz, professor emeritus, University of the District of Columbia.
" A pleasure to read. The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth is destined to become the standard reference on the history of trigonometry for the foreseeable future. Although other authors have attempted to tell the story. I know of no other book that has either the breadth or the depth of this one. Van Brummelen is one of the leading experts in the world on this subject."
- Dennis Duke, Florida State University.
"Van Brummelen presents a history of trigonometry from the earliest times to the end of the sixteenth century. He has produced a work that rises to the highest standards of scholarship but never strays into pedantry. His extensive bibliography cites every work of consequence for the history of trigonometry, copious footnotes and diagram illuminate the text, and reproductions from old printed works add interest and texture to the narrative."
- J. Lennart Berggren, professor emeritius, Simon Fraser University,
No other version available