From Cardano’s great art to Lagrange’s reflections: filling a gap in the history of algebra
Jacqueline Stedall
University of Oxford, UK
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- Review in Ann. Sci.“This must be the first book describing exactly, in detail and nearly completely, the development of algebra in this period in more than two centuries. I learned much, especially many details and illuminating connections. The book is a must-read for researchers interested in the history of mathematics and for mathematicians dealing with algebra.” — Ulrich Reich (Bretten)
- Review in Bull. Lond. Math. Soc.“The aim of the book is not to examine this slow and halting progress with the hindsight of modern understanding, but rather to try to get into the minds of the mathematicians of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and try to look at the progress they made using the tools and notation then available. This is an ambitious, yet very valuable, approach. It is ambitious because the reader has to throw away the way they think about mathematics and try to appreciate a very different style of mathematical thought. It is valuable because this approach, more than any other, leads to a deeper understanding of how mathematics develops.” — Edmund F. Robertson (St. Andrews)
- Review in MAA Reviews“The gap in Stedall’s title is [...] the period between the solution of the cubic and quartic equations (the time of Cardano, in the middle of the 16th century) and the first work to make a serious contribution to understanding why the quintic was resisting solution (Lagrange’s Reflections, late in the 18th century). Stedall shows us what was going on in between, paying attention in particular to the themes that led to Lagrange’s ideas.” — Fernando Q. Gouvêa (Waterville, ME)
- Review in Math. Semesterber. (in German)
- Review in MathSciNet
- Review in zbMATH