Unknown Quantity

A brilliant and sparklingly original account of algebra through the ages, by one of mathematics' great popularizers: 'Unknown Quantity buzzes with rivalries, frustrations and breakthroughs ... A first-rate account that even algebraphobes will struggle to fault.' New Scientist

A brilliant and sparklingly original account of algebra through the ages, by one of mathematics' great popularizers: 'Unknown Quantity buzzes with rivalries, frustrations and breakthroughs . . . A first-rate account that even algebraphobes will struggle to fault.' New Scientist'Here is the story of algebra.' With this deceptively simple introduction, Unknown Quantity opens, thirty-eight centuries ago, at the time of Abraham and Isaac. In stylish and accessible prose, Derbyshire shows how the invention of algebra was more than the beginning of a specific discipline of mathematics; it was also the birth of a new way of thinking that altered, forever, the ways in which we see and understand our world.