User:Peter Schmitt/Draft

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Natural Sciences     Social Sciences     Humanities     Arts     Applied Arts and Sciences     Recreation /noinclude %% 18jul09 : Kaplan, The Nothing that is Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, xii+225 pages, $22.00. Philip J. Davis, Embedding Zero in Exposition Book Review, SIAM News (September 17, 2000) [[1]] Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Much ado about some thing Book Review. Nature 401, 645-646 (14 October 1999) doi:10.1038/44273 [[2]] This popular book deals with a fascinating aspect of mathematics: the occurrence of zero within the arithmetics of integers and real numbers, and its many representations as numerals. Robert Kaplan is at his best on the latter: a wide range of examples is given, both of numerals and also of possible origins for the signs '0' and 'o'. Reviewed by Andrew Leahy [[3]] Brian Blank, The College Mathematics Journal, Vol.32 No.2, March 2001, 155-160 157-160 (Seife 157-158) 158-150 [[4]] Keith Devlin, % "The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero" Natural History, Dec, 1999 [[5]] John Derbyshire, The conquering zero Review of The Nothing That Is by Robert Kaplan October 1999 [[6]] Richard Pinch, Much ado about Nothing Magazine issue 2228 (04 March 2000) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16522285.100-much-ado-about-nothing.html ( [[7]] ) %% 20jul09 : Seife Charles Seife, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea Viking Penguin, New York, 2000, 248 pages, $24.95. Steven G. Krantz, What's So Special About Zero? Book Review, SIAM News (September 17, 2000) [[8]] ([pdf]) John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing Pantheon: 2001. 370 pp. $27.50 John O'Connor, Nothing to it! Book review. Nature 410, 748-749 (12 April 2001) doi:10.1038/35071152 It must have been all those noughts at the end of last year's date that started people writing about zero. In 1999 we had Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero (Penguin), in 2000 we had Charles Seife's Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Souvenir), and now we have John Barrow's The Book of Nothing. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6830/full/410748a0.html %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-origin-of-zer All for Nought By accident, it records the oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date... Bill Casselman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada [[9]] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%