Men of Mathematics


Men of Mathematics: The Lives and Achievements of the Great Mathematicians from Zeno to Poincaré is a book on the history of mathematics published in 1937 by Scottish-born American mathematician and science fiction writer E. T. Bell. After a brief chapter on three ancient mathematicians, it covers the lives of about forty mathematicians who flourished in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The book is illustrated by mathematical discussions, with emphasis on mainstream mathematics.
To keep the interest of readers, the book typically focuses on unusual or dramatic aspects of its subjects' lives. Men of Mathematics has inspired many young people, including the young John Forbes Nash Jr. and Freeman Dyson, to become mathematicians. It is not intended as a rigorous history, includes many anecdotal accounts, and presents a somewhat idealised picture of mathematicians, their personalities, research and controversies.

Publication

In July 1935, Bell signed a contract with Simon and Schuster, for a book to be titled The Lives of Mathematicians. He delivered the manuscript at the beginning of November 1935 as promised, but was unhappy when the publishers made him cut about a third of it, and, in order to tie in with their book Men of Art, gave it the title Men of Mathematics which he did not like. He was also unhappy with how long they took to print it: even before he had received his first printed copy in March 1937, he had written and got into print another book, The Handmaiden of the Sciences.

Contents


In the opinion of Ivor Grattan-Guinness the mathematics profession was poorly served by Bell's book:
Eric Bell was criticized in 1983 for incorrectly ascribing the origin of spacetime to Joseph Lagrange:
In reviewing the faculty that served with Harry Bateman at Caltech, Clifford Truesdell wrote:
An impression of the book was given by Rebecca Goldstein in her novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. Describing a character Cass Seltzer, she wrote on page 105: