Stamping through Mathematics, 2001

The astonishing variety and beauty of mathematical elements in stamp design is brought to life in this collection of more than 350 stamps, illustrated with mathematical figures, people, and content, each reproduced in enlarged format, in full color. It's a perfect gift book for anyone interested in stamps, or in the surprising use of mathematics in the real world. The author is widely known in the math community for his regular column on stamps in the magazine The Mathematical Intelligencer.

Introduction; Preface; 1. Early mathematics; 2. Egypt; 3. Greek geometry; 4. Plato's Academy; 5. Euclid and Archimedes; 6. Greek astromony; 7. Ancient board games; 8. China; 9. Central America; 10. India; 11. Islamic mathematics: Al-Khwarizmi to Alhazen; 12. Islamic astronomy; 13. Islamic mathematics: Avicenna to al-Tusi; 14. Late Islamic mathematics; 15. Europe: the Middle Ages; 16. The growth of learning; 17. Art and mathematics; 18. Chess and Go; 19. The age of exploration; 20. Map making; 21. MAthematical instruments; 22. Globes; 23. Nicolaus Copernicus; 24. Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo; 25. Calendars and clocks; 26. Calculating numbers; 27. France: Descartes and Pascal; 28. Isaac Newton; 29: The Continent: Leibniz to Euler; 30. Reactions to Newton; 31. Halley's comet; 23. Determination of longitude; 33. Mathematics in the New World; 34. Enlightenment France; 35. The French Revolution; 36. Gauss and non-Euclidian geometry; 37. The development of algebra; 38. 19th-century astronomy; 39. Russia; 40. Eastern Europe; 41. China and Japan; 42. Mathematical physics 1; 43. Mathematical physics 2; 44. Albert Einstein; 45. Mathematical physics 3; 46. Statistics; 47. 20th-century mathematics; 48. The birth of computing; 49. The development of computing; 50. International congresses; 51. Mathematics and nature; 52. Mathematics and art; 53. The geometry of space; 54. Mathematical recreations; 55. Mathematical education; 56. Metrication; 57. Mathematical shapes; List of stamps; Index.