David Stipp

Bertrand Russell wrote that mathematics can exalt "as surely as poetry." This is especially true of one equation: eiπ + 1 = 0, the brainchild of Leonhard Euler, the Mozart of mathematics. More than two centuries after Euler's death, it is still regarded as a conceptual diamond of unsurpassed beauty. Called Euler's identity or God's equation, it includes just five...