God Created the Integers

Every math enthusiast should take a look at this big Stephen Hawking volume: God Created the Integers.

No, Hawking didn't write all 1000+ pages. He collected some classic texts of great mathematicians, preceded with a short bio and sprinkled commentary throughout. Amazon reviewers say the Lucasian professor made some mistakes. Yes, I wish Hawking will correct them all too.

It is awesome to read Euclid, Archimedes, Newton and other great mathematicians in their own (translated) words. They don't write like mathematicians today write, such as "I will say...." I do not understand much of the writings, of course.

The lives of the mathematicians are interesting to read about too. Some suffer horrible circumstances in life. It is also interesting to read about the feuds of some of them. Gosh, Newton and Hooke don't get along! He also attacked the heck out of Liebniz on calculus. Besides being a great physicist, I think Hawking is an awesome writer too.

However, I do have some complains about the book. Some footnotes and commentaries are in some ultra small fonts that requires magnifying glasses. It is ok to split this work into multiple volumes. To distinguish text from comments how about a complete different font, or boxes, or other means of typography?

Now about the title, "God Created the Integers" is a short form of the quote "God created the integers all else was the work of man".

Now I am no distinguished mathematician (not even a decent student) but I beg to differ. Integers themselves are also the work of man. Zero and the negative numbers are invented (and are significant milestone of mathematics).

I would say it is more appropriate to say "God Created the Natural Numbers".