Stamping through Mathematics

"If you are interested in the beauty of mathematics, you must go out and buy Robin Wilson's absolutely stunning book of mathematical stamps, a book which traces the history of mathematics through images on the postage of countries around the globe."

- Victor Katz, MAA Online

Postage stamps are an attractive vehicle for presenting mathematics and its development. For many years the author has presented illustrated lectures entitled Stamping through Mathematics to school and college groups and to mathematical clubs and societies, and has written a regular Stamps Corner for The Mathematical Intelligencer. The book contains almost four-hundred postage stamps relating to mathematics, ranging from the earliest forms of counting to the modern computer age. The stamps appear enlarged and in full color with full historical commentary, and are listed at the end of the book.

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.