The secret lives of numbers : . a global history of mathematics & its unsung trailblazers / Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell

In the beginning
The turtle and the emperor
A town called Alex
The dawn of time
On the origin(s) of zero
The house of wisdom
The impossible dream
The (first) calculus pioneers
Newtonianism for ladies
A grand synthesis
The mathematical mermaid
Revolutions
=
Mapping the stars
Number-crunching

Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. But despite its reputation as the study of fundamental truths, the stories we have been told about it are wrong. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell introduce readers to the mathematical boundary-smashers who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality. From the brilliant Arabic scholars of the ninth-century House of Wisdom, and the pioneering African American mathematicians of the twentieth century, to the 'lady computers' around the world who revolutionised our knowledge of the night sky, we meet these fascinating trailblazers and see how they contributed to our global knowledge today. Along the way, the mathematics itself is explained extremely clearly, for example, calculus is described using the authors' home baking, as they pose the question: how much cake is in our cake? This revisionist, completely accessible and radically inclusive history of mathematics is as entertaining as it is important"--Publisher's description