God Created the Integers
by Stephen Hawking · first published 2005
43% recommend57% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Anthology of excerpts from thirty-one landmark mathematical works, giving a high-level view of how mathematics developed; suits readers wanting history and 'aha' moments about familiar ideas.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Includes works by : Euclid, Archimedes, Diophantus, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Pierre Simon De LaPlace, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, George Boole, Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, Karl Weierstrass, Richard Julius Wilhelm Dedekind, Georg Cantor, Henri Lebesgue, Kurt Godel, Alan Mathison Turing.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2013–2020Geometry revisited
H. S. M. Coxeter, Samuel L. Greitzer
Recommended by 2 · mentioned by 22 recommend · 2 mention2 recommend · 22 recommend
2008–2018Where I'm Calling From
Raymond Carver
Recommended by 1 · mentioned by 31 recommend · 3 mention1 recommend · 31 recommend
E, The Story of a Number
Eli Maor
Recommended by 8 · mentioned by 88 recommend · 8 mention8 recommend · 88 recommend
2014–2025Mathematical circles
S. A. Genkin
Recommended by 6 · mentioned by 66 recommend · 6 mention6 recommend · 66 recommend
2011–2026Prime Obsession
John Derbyshire
Recommended by 22 · mentioned by 2622 recommend · 26 mention22 recommend · 2622 recommend
2015–2022Things to make and do in the fourth dimension
Matt Parker
Recommended by 6 · mentioned by 66 recommend · 6 mention6 recommend · 66 recommend
2017–2026Elements of Mathematics
John C. Stillwell
Recommended by 4 · mentioned by 44 recommend · 4 mention4 recommend · 44 recommend
2012–2023An imaginary tale
Paul J. Nahin
Recommended by 10 · mentioned by 1110 recommend · 11 mention10 recommend · 1110 recommend
…things a lot clearer than natural language. (If you've ever tried to read old mathematical articles / books that are a few centuries old, you'll understand the power of mathematical notation. Check out "God Created The Integers" or "On the Shoulders Of Giants" by Stephen Hawking if you're curious: these are two books that provide excerpts of highly influential works from earlier mathematicians and physicists, respectively)
on “How I faced my fears and learned to be good at math” ↗I thought "God Created the Integers" by Stephen Hawking was a pretty good high-level view of the history and progression of mathematics. It did give me some 'aha' moments about things I knew but never realized how they were developed.
on “Why do many math books have so much detail and so little enlightenment? (2010)” ↗I can recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Created_the_Integers "God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History is an anthology, edited by Stephen Hawking, of "excerpts from thirty-one of the most important works in the history of mathematics.""
on “Classic Mathematics Books for Lifelong Learners” ↗God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History. Stephen Hawking. I bought mine for cheap on alibris (https://www.alibris.com/God-Created-the-Integers-The-Mathema...) From the blurb: "...includes…
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History. Stephen Hawking. I bought mine for cheap on alibris (https://www.alibris.com/God-Created-the-Integers-The-Mathema...) From the blurb: "...includes…
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗Not at all. My own recommendation, God created the Integers, isn't a math textbook. I doubt Hofstadter himself would claim GEB had a point - it was more of an intellectual fugue put to paper. If GEB was a novel it would be more along the lines of Finnegan's Wake…
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗I would give God Created The Integers as a reference to read up to where you are in math, not as something to get through. So, you could get a feel for what Euclid wrote, or what Descartes wrote, either after or during learning those lessons.…
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗…is deep, so is physics, and mathematics as well but they are distinct and quite different. Steven Hawking fumbled the proof of the infinitude of primes in his excellent survey of mathematical history "God Created the Integers," as usual for physicists he saw his way to the proof without traversing each step. Infinity is a difficult but knowable concept. Calculus is a good teacher of this, and Euclid is a good teacher of…
on “Was Cantor Wrong? Are the real numbers countable?” ↗…Derbyshire provide good orientation for number theory, analysis & calculus and algebra. The second book might be tough to finish as its really really deep for a thin book. You might also look at books like God Created the Integers by Hawking, The Calculus Gallery by William Dunham that curate interesting and historically important results, where original works are often reproduced. For physics, my goto book (which I have never…
on “Ask HN: How do I learn math/physics in my thirties?” ↗>What would you have appreciated having been given at that age? I remember getting God Created The Integers when I was a teenager and... not finishing it. I also got a copy of Brown & Churchill's Complex Variables and Applications and spent hundreds of hours on it. As a teenager, I preferred textbooks with…
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?” ↗Stephen Hawking appears to disagree with garysweaver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Created_the_Integers Not that Hawking is intrinsically more qualified.
on “Indescribable numbers: The theorem that made me fall in love with math” ↗…and maybe he is unusually bright for an unusually bright person. However, it is certainly possible for a Mathematically inclined person to start a career early in the modern era. I have Hawkin's book "God Created the Integers". It's been awhile since I've read it, but I remember that more than a few of the famous mathematicians he profiled were tackling hard problems at a young age. They certainly weren't still taking Calculus…
on “Is Math a Young Man's Game? No” ↗…it. Stephen Hawking believes what Euclid did in culminating mathematical knowledge (into self-contained 13 volumes) is something that is needed again but has never been done in the modern times. His "God Created The Integers" I suppose is a small attempt in that direction. I would have imagined Eric Wittgenstein's mathematics online encyclopedia (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/) could be such a book. But it has too much backward…
on “How To Read Mathematics” ↗…Leopold Kronecker, when criticizing Cantor's work [0]. See also Stephen Hawking's Anthology by a similar name. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Created_the_Integers
on “How Big Is Infinity?” ↗…actually think about philosophy is not just a catalogue of arguments and positions one could take, but that the famous works are things worth reading unto themselves. There are a few math papers like that ("God Created the Integers" tries to anthologize them) but they are the exception rather than the rule. But maybe there's another explanation?
on “The Calculus They Won't Teach You [video]” ↗