Reviews

Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics by Talithia Williams

maw539's review

informative inspiring slow-paced

2.0

Non fiction book # 2 for 2024 and this one started strongly. The first half of this book showcased amazing women, given incredible opportunities and highlighting the real life applications of advanced mathematics. The second half of the book also showcased brilliant women however all of these women had dedicated their careers to universities, whether to teach or to complete research. While my maths skills need a major refresh, I was disappointed to see so few real life applications, of which there are thousands, for women with these smarts and their incredible education (so many PhDs!). If you love maths and are looking to understand what a career in this field could look like, this is a book for you.

annoeing's review

4.0

I can't say I 100% enjoyed reading about people who ruined my high school life with numbers.

But as a book about women in mathematics, this book definitely serves its purpose and gives certain women their recognition they deserve. It's good that the book is not too technical - so you aren't expected to actually know and understand how gravity was defined etc.

mezzythedragon's review

5.0

I just read this in one day. Completely fascinating stuff, and the fact that the women are a diverse bunch is a big plus. I hope there’ll be more editions as time goes on.

kkosberg's review against another edition

informative slow-paced

3.0

I learned a lot from this book and did enjoy reading it. I liked how there were mathematical explanations as well as information about the people. 

lamela's review

hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

3.0

First of all, the layout of the book made it interesting to read it because it included many pictures, but also visuals to explain mathematical concepts. Grenerally, what I will take from this book is not every biography in detail, but the mass of women in STEM with a focus on math and engineering. And although the biographies very partly repetetive about where women were born and how they grew up, followed by information on their primary and secondary information going into their career in academia, publications and awards. Although This made it a dry lecture, this helped me to understand that every single one of these woman had family members and respected intellectuals in academia to support her, and that trough the centuries, many talented women never had someone promoting their skills. Overall, this book provided me an expanedition of my horizon because it connected a topic near and dear to me, feminism, with math and technology, which I am more critical about. The simplification of math was sad and prevented me from actually grasping the womens achievements.

knight101's review

informative fast-paced

4.0

attabey's review

3.0

I wish it went deeper on the actual science they contributed. For example, for Sofia Kovalevskaya it said "she published an article on crystals" ehhh sure but what about it was cool/intriguing. I would have valued more a deep dive into what she contributed to science that just a superficial bio on "She was born here, married x, studied here, published a, b, and c the end.

Would recommend this for folks that just want to know superficial details and to dig more later.

natep's review

3.0

Power in Numbers is a book on the history of mathematics done by predominantly modern women written by the first tenured black woman at Harvey Mudd College. The majority of women included are modern, having about 5 historical women, including Emmy Noether and Sophia Kovalevskaya, followed by 20 something modern women, like the women from Hidden Figures and Maryam Mirzakhani. There are some notable omissions of historical female mathematicians, such as Mary Somerville and the Countess Lovelace, which seemed glaring due to the already small number of historical females. The book also had these less formal pages at the beginning of each section that gave very short, almost unsatisfying descriptions of some mathematicians like Hypatia and Emilie du Chatelet. Additionally, some of the modern women seemed to have done very little in actual mathematics, being simply career women in mathematics-related fields rather than researchers, or women who studied how to encourage girls to do STEM. That said, some, like Daina Taimina who created the first standing hyperbolic plane model, were rather interesting, underrated women were included. The writing in this was rather uneven, with some strong sections and others that read like the author biography flap, which may have contributed to making those women seem irrelevant. Another big issue was the simplification of the math, which wasn't done too well, thus creating problems in actually specifying the women's accomplishments, diminishing some of this book's power when compared to its counterparts that talk about female scientists. A big positive in this book was the wealth of sources at the back that provided further reading for each mathematician that provide more comprehensive histories for some of the women.



A copy of this book was given to the reviewer through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.