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Morneau-Guérin, Frédéric (2026). Pentagons and Pentagrams: An Illustrated History [review of the book from Maor, Eli, & Jost, Eugen]. MAA Reviews.
File(s) available for this item:![[thumbnail of Pentagons and Pentagrams_ An Illustrated History – Mathematical Association of America.pdf]](https://r-libre.teluq.ca/style/images/fileicons/pdf.png "Pentagons and Pentagrams_ An Illustrated History – Mathematical Association of America.pdf")
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- Pentagons and Pentagrams_ An Illustrated History – Mathematical Association of America.pdf
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- Pentagons and Pentagrams_FMG.pdf
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| Item Type: | Book Reviews |
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| Refereed: | No |
| Status: | Published |
| Abstract: | Veteran historian of mathematics and gifted expositor Eli Maor has built a distinguished career around exploring single mathematical themes in depth (the number e, the Pythagorean theorem, geometric beauty, …) and tracing their cultural and intellectual reverberations across centuries. In Pentagons and Pentagrams, richly illustrated by Swiss artist Eugen Jost, Maor turns his attention to the five-sided polygon and its starry counterpart, producing an engaging narrative that is at once historical survey, recreational mathematics compendium, and meditation on mathematical interconnectedness. The subject may appear modest: the regular pentagon and the pentagram formed by its diagonals. Yet Maor demonstrates early on that this figure, lacking the immediate symmetry of the square or the hexagon, conceals structural subtleties that have fascinated mathematicians for over two millennia. The internal web of ratios created by the pentagon’s diagonals gives rise to relationships of striking elegance and surprising depth. What seems at first glance geometrically awkward reveals itself as mathematically fecund. |
| Additional Information: | Permission to make copies of individual articles, in paper or electronic form, including posting on personal and class web pages, for educational and scientific use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the following copyright notice: [Copyright the Mathematical Association of America 2020. All rights reserved.] Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise or to republish, requires specific permission of the MAA's Director of Publications Operations and possibly a fee. |
| Official URL: | https://maa.org/book-reviews/pentagons-and-pentagr... |
| Depositor: | Morneau-Guérin, Frédéric |
| Owner / Manager: | Frédéric Morneau-Guérin |
| Deposited: | 27 Feb 2026 14:36 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Feb 2026 14:36 |
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