William Leonard SchaafCritiques

My reaction to reading this book in 2004.

A good, juvenile biography of Gauss that tries to describe his work and explain some of the math he developed or, at least, trying to explain why it was significant. This book covers about as much of Gauss' life as the Tord Hall biography does and actually covers some of Gauss scientific work -- like the development of magnetic survey instruments and the co-development of the first telegraph machine -- in greater detail.

Found in my grandma's garage, this book changed my life, though I think I would not recommend the book so much as its purpose. Give an impressionable 14-year-old some philosophy (esp. Carl Hempel) but even more so a taste of the beautiful proofs that await beyond high school and the first calculus sequence.

An elementary math textbook in the style of Bertrand Russell's logicism.