Book Review: James Stirling: A Sketch of his Life and Works, along with his Scientific Correspondence

Leonhard Euler: His Life, the Man, and His Works

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary (on April 15, 2007) of Euler’s birth, an attempt is made to bring Euler’s genius to the attention of a broad segment of the educated public. The three stations of his life—Basel, St. Petersburg, and Berlin—are sketched and the principal works identified in more or less chronological order. To convey a flavor of his work and its impact on modern science, ...

James Parkinson: his life and times

GEORGE P. MILNE (ed.), Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society: a bicentennial history 1789-1989, Aberdeen University Press, 1989, 8vo, pp. xv, 313, illus., £17.00+£1.50 p&p from Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society, Medical Centre, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB9 2ZB. Readers who assume from the title that this is a structured history of Scotland's oldest Medico-Chirurgical Society will be sadly disappo...

Oliver Goldsmith. His life and works

Book Review Ernst Zermelo: An Approach to His Life andWork

Ernst Zermelo is familiar to mathematicians as the creator of the controversial Axiom of Choice in 1904 and the theorem, based on the Axiom of Choice, that every set can be well ordered. Many will be aware that in 1908 he axiomatized set theory—in a form later modified by Abraham Fraenkel (1922) and then by Zermelo himself (1930). Some will know of Zermelo’s conflict with Ludwig Boltzmann over ...

Humphry Davy: his life, works, and contribution to anesthesiology.

H ISTORY offers us a tool to avoid the condemnation George Santayana (1863–1952) envisioned for those who forget the past. In studying the history of anesthesia, and in particular the singular events that brought anesthesia into the consciousness of the world in Boston in 1845 and 1846, we find much to admire, but even more that we might hope not to repeat. The first public demonstrations of an...