Description:
The cultural historian Theodore Merz called it "that great book with seven seals," the mathematician Leopold Kronecker, "the book of all books." Already one century after its publication, C.F. Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801) had acquired an almost mythical reputation, standing as an ideal of exposition in notation, problems and methods; as a model of organization and theory building; and as a source of mathematical inspiration. Various readings of the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae have left their mark on developments as different as Galois's theory of algebraic equations, Lucas's primality tests, and Dedekind's theory of ideals. In this volume, eighteen authors--mathematicians, historians, and philosophers among them-- assess the impact of the Disquisitiones since its publication.
Review Quotes:
From the reviews:
"A book that traces the profound effect Gauss's masterpiece has had on mathematics over the past two centuries. ... The shaping of arithmetic is a major accomplishment, one which will stand as an important reference work on the history of number theory for many years. ... The editors and authors deserve our thanks for their efforts." (Victor J. Katz, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 h)
"It's a big book, with eighteen authors and almost six hundred pages, and it mixes the work of well-established scholars with that of recent Ph.D.'s. ... This volume deserves a wide audience, both among the mathematically able and among historians of nineteenth-century science." (Thomas Archibald, Institute for Science and International Security, Vol. 102 (2), June, 2011)