The Real and the Complex: A History of Analysis in the 19th Century

This book contains a history of real and complex analysis in the nineteenth century, from the work of Lagrange and Fourier to the origins of set theory and the modern foundations of analysis. It studies the works of many contributors including Gauss, Cauchy, Riemann, and Weierstrass.

This book is unique owing to the treatment of real and complex analysis as overlapping, inter-related subjects, in keeping with how they were seen at the time. It is suitable as a course in the history of mathematics for students who have studied an introductory course in analysis, and will enrich any course in undergraduate real or complex analysis.

Jeremy Gray is the author or co-author of ten books, most recently Hidden Harmony – Geometric Fantasies: the rise of complex function theory (Springer 2013) with Umberto Bottazzini (Milan), upon which this book is based. He is also the author of Henri Poincaré: a scientific biography (Princeton U.P. 2012) and Plato’s Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics (Princeton U.P. 2008). In 2009 he was awarded the Albert Leon Whiteman Memorial Prize of the American Mathematical Society for his work in the history of mathematics, and he was elected an inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012.