Profiles in Mathematics: Rene Descartes

Born the son of a blacksmith and apprenticed to a bookbinder at an early age, Michael Faraday seemed destined for a modest life as an artisan. But driven by an unquenchable curiosity for knowledge, Michael read the books he bound and used his meager earnings to attend scientific lectures.

Children's Literature

I wish nonfiction books written for kids were bolder with ideas and more sparing with facts. Do not misunderstand me; this is a readable and very well-illustrated book about an important figure. It would be a useful addition to any library. However, it is a timid work, much too timid to fascinate or frighten or baffle or inspire a reader, as children's fiction does. This is not due to any lack of material. After all, Descartes shared the world with Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Galileo, Louis XIV and the Inquisition. Opera was new, as was the telescope, decimal arithmetic, the microscope, probability, and the mechanical calculator. In addition, Descartes was anything but dull. A soldier, mathematician and philosopher, he used his famous axiom "I think, therefore I am" to explain everything from the orbits of the planets to how the brain functions. The ferocity with which he defended his ideas made enemies of friends and wore out his welcome in at least two countries. He is credited with the coordinate system that marries algebra to geometry and resulted in analytic geometry, although he did not use it as we do and he based much of what he did on the work of others. Intelligent, worldly, insightful, arrogant, and often incredibly wrong, Descartes was a precise embodiment of the Enlightenment. His story should be every bit as thrilling as Harry Potter. Part of the "Profiles in Mathematics" series. Reviewer: Michael Chabin