Poor Robin's Prophecies: A Curious Almanac, and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian England - Couverture rigide

Wardhaugh, Dr. Benjamin

 
9780199605422: Poor Robin's Prophecies: A Curious Almanac, and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian England
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 0199605424 ISBN 13 : 9780199605422
Editeur : Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Author, astrologer, journalist, satirist, and 'well-willer to the mathematics', Poor Robin of Saffron Walden was a fantastic, yet invented, figure of British popular culture from the Restoration to the end of the Georgian period. Poor Robin's Almanac first appeared in 1662, developing an enthusiastic following and long outliving its original creator to last until 1828. Benjamin Wardhaugh tells the great story of Georgian popular mathematics - through Poor Robin's remarkable life, from his humble beginnings as an almanac-writer through to best-selling stardom, controversy, and decline. Using the character, wit, and columns of Poor Robin, Wardhaugh explores the mathematics of ordinary people, from learning sums to using mathematics in weighing and measuring, in business, agriculture, map-making, and navigation. This is a history of mathematics that is rarely thought about - creative, popular, and led by practical and social needs. It is centered on the ordinary people that used it. Their names remain little-known; their solutions have vanished along with the situations that required them; but their energy and ideas - as captured by Poor Robin - create a wonderfully rich picture of what mathematics can be, and has been.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

Benjamin Wardhaugh lives in Oxford. He trained in mathematics, music and history, and has taught both science to historians and history to mathematicians. He is a former Fellow of All Souls College; he now studies and writes about history, particularly its mathematical parts.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Oxford University Press
Date d'édition
2012
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0199605424
ISBN 13 
9780199605422
Reliure
Relié
Numéro d'édition
1
Nombre de pages
256
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
Messaggerie Libri
ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it

Via Verdi, 8
Assago Milano
Italie