B. L. van der Waerden (1903–1996)

A fantastic book on Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek math history for mathematically inclined readers, translated from Dutch in 1954. You will learn the odd yet intuitively natural ways in which they performed their calculations. It's chock full of wonderful images of Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek mathematics, including cuneiform, hieroglyphics, hieratics, all thoroughly translated (trans-numerated?) in modern mathematical symbols. Apparently the publisher hired an archaeologist to come up with a host of pictures, which are just stunning as a collection in and of themselves.

The ancient Egyptian command of the mathematics of fractions, using their inverse-heavy symbology, is amazingly impressive. And it turns out the Pythagorean theorem is fundamentally not Pythagorean, but Babylonian, as is evidenced by the lists of 'Pythagorean triples' the Babylonians calculated and kept.

(Also, there is a wonderful picture of a 15th century BC Egyptian sculpture of a humorously happy 15th century BC scribe, the mathematician of the day.)

Great, great book, stuck in the basement of my local library. I'm so glad the librarian said "Here. You might like this."… (mer)