How can we be sure that Pythagoras’s theorem is really true? Why is the ‘angle in a semicircle’ always 90 degrees? And how can tangents help determine the speed of a bullet?
In The Wonder Book of Geometry, David Acheson takes you on a highly illustrated tour through the history of geometry from ancient Greece to the present day. He emphasizes elegant deduction and practical applications and argues that geometry can offer the quickest route to the whole spirit of mathematics at its best. Along the way, we encounter the quirky and the unexpected, meet the great personalities involved, and uncover some of the loveliest surprises in mathematics.
