书名：Men of Mathematics数学大师：从芝诺到庞加莱

作者：E.T. Bell
出版社名称：Touchstone
出版时间：1986
语种：英文 
ISBN：9780671628185
商品尺寸：13.5 x 4.1 x 21 cm
包装：平装
页数：608

埃里克·坦普尔·贝尔是美国科学院院士，曾任美国数学协会主席，美国数学学会和美国科学促进会副主席。他的这部Men of Mathematics《数学大师：从芝诺到庞加莱》是介绍数学史和数学艺术的经典著作。无论是数学专业人士，还是一般读者，都可以从本书中获得许多有关数学和数学发展史的知识；而对那些久闻其名的大数学家，也会有更真切的了解。

媒体评论：
“贝尔教授已经出色地完成了他的作品……任何学习数学的[人]都会从阅读这本书中获益，因为他使得这一学科变得人性化，并有助于我们对数学历史环境的了解。”——伯特兰·罗素（Bertrand Russell）

“极度和谐一致……数学哲学的第1本教材……贝尔的风格非常赏心悦目。”——《纽约时报》

“贝尔教授已经写出一本引人入胜的著作。大量传记的细节和数学知识，的确令人惊叹……他吸引着读者；他吊起了胃口。”——《自然》杂志

From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematics, Professor E.T. Bell, comes a witty, accessible, and fascinating look at the beautiful craft and enthralling history of mathematics.
Men of Mathematics provides a rich account of major mathematical milestones, from the geometry of the Greeks through Newton’s calculus, and on to the laws of probability, symbolic logic, and the fourth dimension. Bell breaks down this majestic history of ideas into a series of engrossing biographies of the great mathematicians who made progress possible—and who also led intriguing, complicated, and often surprisingly entertaining lives.
Never pedantic or dense, Bell writes with clarity and simplicity to distill great mathematical concepts into their most understandable forms for the curious everyday reader. Anyone with an interest in math may learn from these rich lessons, an advanced degree or extensive research is never necessary.

Review
Bertrand Russell Professor Bell has done his work well....Any [one] engaged in learning mathematics will profit by reading him, since he humanizes the subject and helps to a realization of the historical environment.

The New York Times Extremely harmonious...a first text in the philosophy of mathematics… Bell's style is very enjoyable.

Nature Professor E.T. Bell has written a fascinating book. The amount of biographical details and of mathematics that he has compressed into a volume of 600 pages is extraordinary...he carries the reader along; he whets the appetite.

全书以历史上30多位数学大师的生平为主线，分章讲述了他们的杰出贡献、性情喜好和生活轶事。同时，本书也是一部思想史，追述了从古代到20世纪数学思想的伟大发展。它以清晰的笔触、幽默的手法，对复杂的数学思想作了巧妙的分析和论述。

Eric Temple Bellwas born in 1883 in Aberdeen, Scotland. His early education was obtained in England. Dr. Bell was a former President of the Mathematical Association of America, a former Vice President of the American Mathematical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was on the editorial staffs of the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, the American Journal of Mathematics, and the Journal of the Philosophy of Science. Dr. Bell died in December 1960, just before the publication of his latest book, The Last Problem.

This section is headed Introduction rather than Preface (which it really is) in the hope of decoying habitual preface-skippers into reading -- for their own comfort -- at least the following paragraphs down to the first row of stars before going on to meet some of the great mathematicians. I should like to emphasize first that this book is not intended, in any sense, to be a history of mathematics, or any section of such a history.

The lives of mathematicians presented here are addressed to the general reader and to others who may wish to see what sort of human beings the men were who created modern mathematics. Our object is to lead up to some of the dominating ideas governing vast tracts of mathematics as it exists today and to do this through the lives of the men responsible for those ideas.

Two criteria have been applied in selecting names for inclusion: the importance for modern mathematics of a man's work; the human appeal of the man's life and character. Some qualify under both heads, for example Pascal, Abel, and Galois; others, like Gauss and Cayley, chiefly under the first, although both had interesting lives. When these criteria clash or overlap in the case of several claimants to remembrance for a particular advance, the second has been given precedence as we are primarily interested here in mathematicians as human beings.

Of recent years there has been a tremendous surge of general interest in science, particularly physical science, and its bearing on our rapidly changing philosophical outlook on the universe. Numerous excellent accounts of current advances in science, written in as un-technical language as possible, have served to lessen the gap between the professional scientist and those who must make their livings at something other than science. In many of these expositions, especially those concerned with relativity and the modern quantum theory, names occur with which the general reader cannot be expected to be familiar -- Gauss, Cayley, Riemann, and Hermite, for instance. With a knowledge of who these men were, their part in preparing for the explosive growth of physical science since 1900, and an appreciation of their rich personalities, the magnificent achievements of science fall into a truer perspective and take on a new significance.

The great mathematicians have played a part in the evolution of scientific and philosophic thought comparable to that of the philosophers and scientists themselves. To portray the leading features of that part through the lives of master mathematicians, presented against a background of some of the dominant problems of their times, is the purpose of the following chapters. The emphasis is wholly on modern mathematics, that is, on those great and simple guiding ideas of mathematical thought that are still of vital importance in living, creative science and mathematics.