Stories about mathematicians and physicists. Transl. from the Russian by Jean-Michel Kantor (Q2743163)

The original Russian edition appeard in 1981 and 1985 (Zbl 0566.01011), and in English in 1988. This translation has been made from the original version; but the bibliographies have been largely updated, and to French sources, which the author did not use. He seems to have relied on histories entirely; even editions of works of his subjects are excluded. Their rollcall is distinguished but modest, belying the general title of the book: Cardano (equations); Galileo (laws of motion, telescopes, longitude, speed of light); Huygens (clocks with balances, pendula); Pascal (geometry, vacua, probability); and finally and much later in chronology, Gauss (number theory, geodesy, non-Euclidean geometry, magnetism).