Thinking the unthinkable. The reception of non-Euclidean geometry in the German-speaking countries (1860--1900) (Q2393419)

As mentioned in the preliminaries, the history of non-Euclidean geometry belongs to the subjects that were investigated in many papers, so it is one of the best investigated disciplines. Nevertheless, the book under review fills a really big gap: it is focused on the history of the reception of non-Euclidean geometry in German-speaking countries from 1860 to 1900; it is based on original sources and their interpretation. In nine chapters, the author first presents the publications by János Bolyai and Nikolaj Ivanovich Lobachevskij, the geometry on surfaces with constant curvature (Beltrami), the models of Klein and Cayley, spherical and elliptical geometry, the models by Poincaré, fictional proofs, axiomatics, discussions, and non-Euclidean geometry in school-teaching. The original sources are often presented in the original, that means as a facsimile, and not only the text. These facsimiles have a light grey background and are easy to read. I think, this is a very impressive method for a book like this, which should be imitated by other authors. The presentation concentrates not only on the well-known texts, but also on texts which were scarcely recognised until now. At the end, the author presents the thesis of Simon Klügel from 1763 and the article ``Parallel'' from the Encyclopedia of Ersch/Gruber (1838); also these sources are hard to find and it is the merit of the author to present these two texts as a whole. The author's interest in non-Euclidean geometry reaches back many years, so the book is based on a very thorough investigation. It does not only focus on great and well-known names like Klein, Poincaré and so on, but also presents the ideas and texts of lesser-known authors. For everybody who is interested in non-Euclidean geometry this book is a real pleasure to read. Further it is a good example for presenting the development of a discipline not only at universities but also in the teaching at high-schools.