The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math’s Unsung Trailblazers

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars | 88 ratings

Price: 22.04

Last update: 12-24-2024


About this item

A new history of mathematics focusing on the marginalized voices who propelled the discipline, spanning six continents and thousands of years of untold stories.

"A book to make you love math."—Financial Times

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—warped like the sixteenth-century map that enlarged Europe at the expense of Africa, Asia and the Americas. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, renowned math historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell make the case that the history of math is infinitely deeper, broader, and richer than the narrative we think we know.

Our story takes us from Hypatia, the first great female mathematician, whose ideas revolutionized geometry and who was killed for them—to Karen Uhlenbeck, the first woman to win the Abel Prize, “math’s Nobel.” Along the way we travel the globe to meet the brilliant Arabic scholars of the “House of Wisdom,” a math temple whose destruction in the Siege of Baghdad in the thirteenth century was a loss arguably on par with that of the Library of Alexandria; Madhava of Sangamagrama, the fourteenth-century Indian genius who uncovered the central tenets of calculus 300 years before Isaac Newton was born; and the Black mathematicians of the Civil Rights era, who played a significant role in dismantling early data-based methods of racial discrimination.

Covering thousands of years, six continents, and just about every mathematical discipline, The Secret Lives of Numbers is an immensely compelling narrative history.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Joe M. Payne
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting but I’m an engineer
    Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2024
    Might not be so great unless math is a critical part of your life.
  • Timothy Haugh
    3.0 out of 5 stars There Are Other, Better Books Covering This Ground
    Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2024
    Perhaps this book would appeal more to people who haven’t already read many books on mathematics. As for me, I found very little here that I already hadn’t read about in other, better books. Even their look at “unsung trailblazers”—women & non-Western mathematicians—has made great strides lately and available to anyone looking.

    It has the advantage, I guess, of being more of an overview. They do bring together names that should be better known. Still, I found some of their arguments to be a bit of a stretch, particularly when they look for super-sophisticated mathematics in clay tablets and papyrus. Ultimately, this is not a bad book, but I hope readers will find their way to better titles.
  • linden53
    5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful book!
    Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2024
    this book helps me learn math again after being out of school for math for twenty years...
  • ATCA
    4.0 out of 5 stars Lesser-known players in the history of math
    Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2024
    This is an accessible history of math book that brings in other majors players who impacted our understanding of math beyond the ones typically given credit for math breakthroughs. I appreciate that the authors highlight many (from antiquity to modern day) whose important ideas have pushed our mathematical understanding of the world in new directions - including women, who in time periods where women weren't typically involved in math/science research and people from parts of the world that are often overlooked by the west despite the evidence that key concepts might have originated and/or simultaneously been explored in those regions.

    I imagine this will appeal to folks who generally like pop-math/science books and historians who are intrigued by the history of scientific discovery. In fact, my science-minded partner excitedly put this book on his to-read list after I shared some tidbits with him over the course of reading this book. You don't need to have a graduate degree in math to appreciate the concepts covered in this book and this would be a fun supplement to a hard-cord math curriculum to remind students of the people behind these ideas.

    4.25 out of 5 stars for me!
    Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the e-ARC.
  • kate
    5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most wonderful reads!
    Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2024
    This book is beautifully written, informative, with humor, and it tells the stories of extraordinary mathematicians long neglected because of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I keep it by my bed to reread a few pages every night.
  • Joan J. Mathews
    5.0 out of 5 stars Math for Everyone
    Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2024
    Even a “mathphobe” can understand this book that covers a wide range of time and geography to explain how mathematics came into being, and its many applications.
  • Thomas Kickler
    3.0 out of 5 stars Good history of mathematics for the non mathematican
    Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2024
    Sufficiently detailed to inform the reader of important events in mathematics
    One of the authors a woman seemed hell bent to emphasize womens role in important math developments
  • lutusp
    1.0 out of 5 stars Not really a math book
    Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2024
    This "math book" is actually a long essay about how women have been wronged by academic mathematics and mathematicians. That women have been wronged as described is certainly true, but I didn't volunteer to be told once again how history has unfairly dismissed many first-rate mathematicians who happen to be women.

    So, instead of a solid math text with academic sexism as a minor theme, it's the reverse -- a lengthy broadside about sexism with a thin scaffolding of math added seemingly as an afterthought.

    Even among its selection of women mathematicians, a filter seems to be at work, one that chooses women who were wrongly dismissed and rejected, without acknowledging the many similar accounts in which women played leading roles, example Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission to the largely male, largely ignorant, physics community, or Ada Lovelace, who wrote mathematical algorithms for a machine that was never built -- algorithms we now know would have worked. Similar examples abound, but few appear in this book.

    My point? How will this book encourage young women to resist academic sexist stupidity, knowing that their chances to be accepted are good and becoming better over time?

    As to the title "The Secret Lives of Numbers", it's misleading, because mathematics doesn't care about gender. People might care, mathematics certainly doesn't.

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