A review by marct22
Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra by John Derbyshire

4.0

I did enjoy this book, a bit of a slog, maybe took 2 months to get through it. I worked through much of the math to ensure I understood it. The history was quite interesting, I really enjoyed the way he walked from the beginning to what's going on today. Makes me want to revisit the stuff I learned but have forgotten! If you don't know much math, this book will be very very difficult to read. I had to recall as best I could what little I remember from my undergraduate physics classes to tackle the later stuff like group theory and manifolds. I don't recall learning ring theory, so that was cool to me!