Pressestimmen
This is a work of evident love and outstanding scholarship and I am sure it will do a great deal to advance the reputation of Thomas Harriot. It will, I believe, be acclaimed by academic historians and will become a seminal text for future research. The Mathematical Gazette Dr Stedall has not only put it all together, she has written a fine introduction setting out the importance of the work, and describing the controversy that its original publication in the Praxis engendered. She is to be congratulated on rescuing Harriot from oblivion. Notes and Records of The Royal Society Stedall is an author to watch ... this is a book that should be in any library that tries to have a complete set of historical source material. MAA Online
Kurzbeschreibung
'The Greate Invention of Algebra' casts new light on the work of Thomas Harriot (c.1560-1621), an innovative thinker and practitioner in several branches of the mathematical sciences, including navigation, astronomy, optics, geometry, and algebra. Although on his death Harriot left behind over four thousand manuscript sheets, much of his work remains unpublished. This book focuses on one hundred and forty of Harriot's manuscript pages, those concerned with the structure and solution of equations. The original material has been carefully ordered, translated, and annotated to provide the first complete edition of his work on this subject, and an extended introduction provides the reader with a lucid background to the work and explains its contents. Illustrations from the manuscripts provide fascinating reference material. The appendix discusses correlations between Harriot's manuscripts and the texts of his contemporaries Viete, Warner, and Torporley. The clear and concise exposition makes this an excellent reference volume for historians of mathematics and those interested in the history of science.This is an important new resource for understanding the development of algebra in seventeenth-century England.
