Pervez Hoodbhoy reviews “Mathematics In India” by Kim Plofker (Princeton University Press). From Nature [via 3quarksdaily]:
Buddha is said to have wooed his future wife by reeling off a huge number series.
In a world divided by culture, politics, religion and race, it is a relief to know one thing that stands above them – mathematics. The diversity among today’s mathematicians shows that it scarcely matters who invents concepts or proves theorems; cold logic is immune to prejudice, whim and historical accident. And yet, throughout history, different families of humans have distilled the essence of the cosmos to capture the magic of numbers in many ways.
Mathematics in India shows just how different one of these ways was, and how culture and mathematical development are intimately connected. This carefully researched chronicle of the principal contributions made by a great civilization covers the earliest days of Indian history through to the beginning of the modern period. Regrettably, it stops short of the legendary mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (born 1887), whose name is still seen in today’s research papers. More:
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