Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment

My interest in Euler's biography came from my fascination for the time period in which he lived. The Prussian State ( the nucleus of the Second Reich later in history), and Russia, both had the grant vision to emulate the rest of Europe in the arts and sciences. Hiring the likes of Euler, Voltaire, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach , Maupertuis, Diderot or d'Alembert, was for Frederik II of Prussia (a warmonger who played the flute, and gave the theme of Bach's Musical Offering!) and Catherine the Great, was a priority in the governance of their remote and backwater lands . The royal academies they created during the time of the Enlightenment were a magnet for sometime very highly lucrative positions for the best brains of Europe. Soon, Saint Petersburg and Berlin transformed themselves from awkward , provincial towns, into great metropolis with splendid architecture and flourishing arts and sciences.Calinger's biography of Euler is a great work of profound depth and scholarly research. For myself though, the numerous and very erudite explanations of Euler's achievements in the realm of pure mathematics seem to clog-up the narrative to the point of distraction. The book has a hard time compromising in order to please both the commun reader like me, and a mathematician who may not care much about Voltaire and his fights with Frederick II, but has the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem.

This book is a thorough history of Euler’s life and the lives and accomplishments of his contemporaries. I found myself often confused about whether the author was talking about Euler or someone else. Overall, it relates an amazing story about a significant mathematician and does it well. Although without much flourish.

This is the one stop shop for the life of Leonhard Euler. There is a lot of fine gained detail from life to death.

A hard book to read. Not for everyone. An excellent account of Euler and his amazing life. An amazing man.

Reading this book I realized how little I had known about Euler before even though he is my favorite mathematician. I really only knew about the greatest hits and did not realize how much Euler contributed to things like map making and the physics of navigation. I also really got a sense of what Euler was like as a person. He was always involved in annoying power politics at the schools he worked at. This book is such an accomplishment, I'm grateful that Calinger took on such an ambitious project. I'm even more humbled by Euler now and wish I knew a bit more math so I could appreciate the bulk of his work.

Highly recommended. I'm not a mathematician, but LE is my favorite mathematician. This is a comprehensive biography. The only reason I didn't give the book five stars is because it contains so much material about other people. However, this is a good thing in many ways. I didn't realize the interconnections among people back then. Their technical achievements were amazing. And LE was more amazing than I thought. He worked on so many things. I would have given the book 4.5 stars if I could have.

A good book. Rgds Anders

Superb and very readable biography. Strongly recommend!

A fantastic mathematician ...,good book !Safely delivered . Thank you. .

History of maths for engineers

This book will definitely be of use to scholars and such, but those who read mathematical biographies for recreation will be disappointed. The book is long and dense, rather encyclopedic, filled with details not just of Euler's life but of the people and institutions around him. His mathematics and their ramifications are somewhat buried under mountains of turgid detail.For those just seeking a good read, a shorter book with less detail but more insight should be sought out.

This the most complete biography on Euler.You will certainly learn a lot.But not on the mathématical détail of his work ;I would have prefered a little more as I am a teacher of mathématic;the book is big enough 550 pages plus notes.