Download or read book Imagining Numbers written by Barry Mazur and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour of the creative side of mathematics, this book describes the first use of imaginary numbers in sixteenth-century Italy and the subsequent two-hundred-year effort to perfect the process, citing the words of key Renaissance thinkers.