Zero traces how zero grew from a harmless placeholder to an idea that shook the intellectual and religious life of the European and Islamic worlds, and changed not only how humanity worked with numbers, but how we came to view the universe.
Since ancient times, mathematicians labored for years of their lives to advance pi just a handful of decimal places. Even computers able to calculate pi to trillions of decimal places have yet to reveal pi's secrets, or find its limits.
The biography of numbers, numerals reveals how our system of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0 emerged from ancient ideas to take their familiar form in India, and how the system changed human endeavor forever.
Measurement, emperors and revolutionaries, scientists and founding fathers try and fail to impose orderly standards, yet in their own ways contribute to the realization of the dream of a single, worldwide system of measurement.
