- Hardcover: 334 pages
- Publisher: OUP Oxford (3 July 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0198526024
- ISBN-13: 978-0198526025
- Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 15.7 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,265,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
This is a work of evident love and outstanding scholarship and I am sure it will do a great deal to advance the reputation of Thomas Harriot. It will, I believe, be acclaimed by academic historians and will become a seminal text for future research. (The Mathematical Gazette )
Dr Stedall has not only put it all together, she has written a fine introduction setting out the importance of the work, and describing the controversy that its original publication in the Praxis engendered. She is to be congratulated on rescuing Harriot from oblivion. (Notes and Records of The Royal Society )
Stedall is an author to watch ... this is a book that should be in any library that tries to have a complete set of historical source material. (MAA Online )
Dr Stedall has not only put it all together, she has written a fine introduction setting out the importance of the work, and describing the controversy that its original publication in the Praxis engendered. She is to be congratulated on rescuing Harriot from oblivion. (Notes and Records of The Royal Society )
Stedall is an author to watch ... this is a book that should be in any library that tries to have a complete set of historical source material. (MAA Online )
Product Description
'The Greate Invention of Algebra' casts new light on the work of Thomas Harriot (c.1560-1621), an innovative thinker and practitioner in several branches of the mathematical sciences, including navigation, astronomy, optics, geometry, and algebra. Although on his death Harriot left behind over four thousand manuscript sheets, much of his work remains unpublished. This book focuses on one hundred and forty of Harriot's manuscript pages, those concerned with the structure and solution of equations. The original material has been carefully ordered, translated, and annotated to provide the first complete edition of his work on this subject, and an extended introduction provides the reader with a lucid background to the work and explains its contents. Illustrations from the manuscripts provide fascinating reference material. The appendix discusses correlations between Harriot's manuscripts and the texts of his contemporaries Viète, Warner, and Torporley. The clear and concise exposition makes this an excellent reference volume for historians of mathematics and those interested in the history of science. This is an important new resource for understanding the development of algebra in seventeenth-century England.
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Format:Hardcover
Harriot's book on algebra was published after his death in latin. Unfortunately, the publishers of the day were unable to understand Harriot's genius, his notations and some of his most beautiful results so that in the end they made a mess out of the manuscript pages and published a corrupted book which was soon forgotten. Thanks to Dr Stedall the "original" book, i.e. the one Harriot had in mind, was restored and translated into english. This is a revelation indeed and shows Harriot as a brilliant mathematician at work. You find an ingeniuous notation (far, far, far ahead of Oughtred's) and many "modern" results like the representation of polynomials as product of linear factors. Stedall did a beautiful job not only in restoring the original order of pages and in working out the translation but also in carefully editing and adding helpful notes as well as a gentle introduction. This is the fourth book I read from the same author (J. Stedall) and as the other 3 it was a pleasure and gave insight, insight, insight!
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