Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences

This massive work is available in two formats; the print version which comes in six volumes and nearly 6,000 pages, and an electronic version available from the publisher's SpringerLink web site. Although I assume the text is the same, I have only seen the electronic version and it is that which is reviewed here.

The first thing to say about this opus is that it is not an edited work, but has instead been produced almost entirely by a single author, a professor of mathematics and geophysics who spent 17 years of “intensive work” on this book. Encyclopedia is perhaps...