Significant Figures by Ian Stewart describes the life and times of twenty-five famous mathematicians throughout history. Because of the horrible misogynist stances that existed historically in Mathematics and many other fields, in general, there are only three women in this entire list. That is a sad state of affairs, but it is what it is. It isn’t like women can’t become mathematicians or engineers nowadays. They had some kind of ridiculous theory that women weren’t capable of doing so.

In any case, I digress. With many of the early findings, it is difficult to know if someone discovered something independently or if they had aid. The fight for precedent is rather paramount in mathematics, so it is still a hot topic of debate. Take the Pythagorean Theorem for instance. It was discovered and known back in the time of the ancient Sumerians, but we don’t know much else about it. We know the Chinese found it as well along with the people of Egypt and probably the Indian Subcontinent. The question of who found it first is rather stupid to me, but then again, I guess it is a matter of national pride.

The book goes over mathematicians that we have some historical records of, so since we don’t know who invented the concept of number or counting, that can’t be included. Instead, we start with Archimedes, the legendary engineer, and mathematician from Syracuse. I won’t go over the whole book’s lineup of people since that would make this review pretty long, but it includes people that effectively built upon our knowledge in the present time. For example, Archimedes is included because some of his methods involved precursors to integral calculus, namely exhaustion; just try to get as close to the number as you possibly can.

Now this book bears a number of similarities to Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell, which I have also read and enjoyed. It contains a small biography of the mathematician, the work that they did to go down in history, and the follow-up of how that work is used in the present. It doesn’t go and copy the same list of names from Men of Mathematics so that is good.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and it explained the mathematics and its significance in quite a bit of skill. ( )