Unknown Quantity : a real and imagined history of algebra by John Derbyshire

ISBN: 9781843545699

Atlantic Books, January 2007

382 pages, Hardcover

In this elegant and engaging book, the author of Prime Obsession gives form to the beauty and mystery of that most abstract of mathematical disciplines, algebra. Derbyshire brings to life the extraordinary historical characters who, through the centuries and around the world, played a role in its genesis: Diophantus, the ancient father of algebra; the dazzling and tragic Hypatia, perhaps the only mathematician in history to be skinned alive by an angry mob; and the dashing, romantic Evariste Galois, who developed algebra to higher levels of abstraction before being killed, at age 20, in a pistol duel.