Eli Maor

A fascinating exploration of the pentagon and its role in various cultures The pentagon and its close cousin, the pentagram, have inspired individuals for the last two and half millennia, from mathematicians and philosophers to artists and naturalists. Despite the pentagon's wide-ranging history, no single book has explored the important role of this shape in various cultures, until now. Richly...

A fun, entertaining exploration of the ideas and people behind the growth of trigonometry. Trigonometry has a reputation as a dry, difficult branch of mathematics, a glorified form of geometry complicated by tedious computation. In Trigonometric Delights, Eli Maor dispels this view. Rejecting the usual descriptions of sine, cosine, and their trigonometric relatives, he brings the subject to life in...

A fascinating exploration of the pentagon and its role in various cultures. The pentagon and its close cousin, the pentagram, have inspired individuals for the last two and half millennia, from mathematicians and philosophers to artists and naturalists. Despite the pentagon's wide-ranging history, no single book has explored the important role of this shape in various cultures—until now. Richly illustrated,...

How music has influenced mathematics, physics, and astronomy from ancient Greece to the twentieth century Music is filled with mathematical elements. The works of Bach are often said to possess a math-like logic, and Arnold Schoenberg, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote music explicitly based on mathematical principles. Yet Eli Maor argues that it is music that has had the...

An exploration of one of the most celebrated and well-known theorems in mathematics. By any measure, the Pythagorean theorem is the most famous statement in all of mathematics. In The Pythagorean Theorem, Eli Maor reveals the full story of this ubiquitous geometric theorem. Although attributed to Pythagoras, the theorem was known to the Babylonians more than a thousand years earlier....

How music has influenced mathematics, physics, and astronomy from ancient Greece to the twentieth century. Music is filled with mathematical elements. The works of Bach are often said to possess a math-like logic, and Igor Stravinsky once remarked that "musical form is close to mathematics." Meanwhile, Arnold Schoenberg, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen went further, writing music explicitly based on...