About this item
On a cloudy day in 1413, a balding young man stood at the entrance to the Cathedral of Florence, facing the ancient Baptistery across the piazza. As puzzled passers-by looked on, he raised a small painting to his face, then held a mirror in front of the painting. Few at the time understood what he was up to; even he barely had an inkling of what was at stake. But on that day, the master craftsman and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi would prove that the world and everything within it was governed by the ancient science of geometry.In Proof!, the award-winning historian Amir Alexander traces the path of the geometrical vision of the world as it coursed its way from the Renaissance to the present, shaping our societies, our politics, and our ideals. Geometry came to stand for a fixed and unchallengeable universal order, and kings, empire-builders, and even republican revolutionaries would rush to cast their rule as the apex of the geometrical universe.
About the Author
Amir Alexander is a writer, historian, and mathematician living in Los Angeles.
His latest book, Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, brings to life the fierce struggles surrounding the infinitely small in the 17th century. At stake, he shows, was not just a mathematical concept, but the shape of the modern world, its social hierarchies and political order. The book is coming out in April of 2014, and will also be published in the UK, Japan, Brazil, and Romania.
In his previous book, "Duel at Dawn" (2010) , he offered a look at three romantic young mathematicians - Galois, Abel, and Bolyai - and showed how their mathematical breakthroughs were inseparable from their short and tragic lives and from the legends that grew around them. Writing in the New Criterion, Martin Gardner called the book, "a marvelous history."
Amir's first book, "Geometrical Landscapes," showed how early mathematicians came to view their research as a heroic voyage of exploration, setting the stage for modern mathematics. Published in 2002, it was called "an exceptional, seminal work" by Choice magazine.
Amir has taught history, philosophy, and the history of science at Stanford and UCLA, served on the editorial board of the journal Isis, and published extensively in academic journals. He is a contributor to the New York Times' 'Science Times' section, and his many popular articles on space-related topics have been extremely successful with the general public and have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
