Euclid's Window

by Leonard Mlodinow

Physicist/writer Mlodinow leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is a new alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology. The journey goes from Pythagoras through Gauss and Einstein and into the midst of a new revolution in which scientists are recognizing that all the varied and wondrous forces of nature can be understood through geometry--a weird new geometry of extra, twisted dimensions, in which space and time, matter and energy, are all intertwined and revealed as consequences of a deep, underlying structure of the universe. This book, a blend of rigorous, authoritative investigation and accessible, good-humored storytelling, makes an original argument asserting the primacy of geometry.--From publisher description.