Euclid’s Window by L. Mlodinow
First, I am finally back on the East Coast; however, updates will still be infrequent because I need to prepare for exams.
Second, I read Euclid’s Window by Leonard Mlodinow, a book that I found lying on my parents’ dinner table. The book is five stories, loosely tied together by discussions of Euclid’s Parallel Postulate. The first three stories (Greek geometry, Descartes and his plane, and the assault on the Parallel Postulate by Gauss, Lobachevsky, and Riemann) are about the history of mathematics. The second two stories (about Einstein and string/superstring/M-brane theory) are about the history of theoretical physics.
It is not a particularly good book. Leonard Mlodinow was a Caltech professor, yet the book has almost no actual mathematics in it. About the only thing Mlodinow proves is the Pythagorean Theorem — he doesn’t even show why the square root of 2 is irrational (despite the fact that said irrationality is a central issue of Part I of the book). Furthermore, the fact that Mlodinow constantly uses his sons as examples (his points, lines, curves, inertial observers, and the like are all labeled Alexei and Nicolai and behave accordingly) quickly gets annoying. Finally, the writing quality is IMHO mediocre.
That being said, Mlodinow does discuss some history — e.g. the early years of string theory, how mathematics fared under the Romans, the scientific contributions of Medieval French monks, etc. — that I was not aware of. Also, it warms my heart to see the expression “core dump” being used in popular writing with no definition provided.
So, to sum it up — mediocre writing, no mathematics (don’t let the title fool you), but some history of science that is perhaps not widely known. Is the book worth reading? Not sure, but leaning towards a “no”…