“Holiday-making can itself be a lonely business. To while away those sleepless hours on long train journeys, a good book is vital. On the strength of the title alone, what could be more fitting for discombobulated travellers than Arianrhod's Vector. Not only will readers acquire the mathematical ability to determine forces on an amusement park ride (a vital part of parental arsenals), they will also discover how an elegant piece of mathematical notation has changed the way we think about the world.”

Simon Ings | New Scientist, "The best science non-fiction books of 2024 so far"

"How these [controversial concepts] laid the foundation of the modern world is part of the story told in a remarkable new book, Vector, by Arianrhod, a historian of science. Understanding her text fully requires an undergraduate-level grasp of maths. But her broader theme is easier to recognise: how social and technological change are intertwined with the progress of mathematical thought."

Randeep Ramesh | Guardian

"Terrific. . . . If you take joy in thinking about how the world works, and how a few simple, tiny and beautiful mathematical tools, which express and do so much, evolve from the collective and individual consciousness of humans over time, you’ll love Arianrhod’s history of vectors, tensors and all the thought and struggle that birthed them. . . . The author’s relaxed writing style is superb, her erudition of her field and its history is genuinely impressive, and her understanding of intersectional issues provides nuance and context which all good histories need."

Tasmanian Times

"Arianrhod tells the story beautifully. . . . [It's] a very human story of how men and women explored and refined pure maths and physics, their friendships and rivalries, frustration and insights. Arianrhod is most effective in describing collaboration across time and nationalities, as well trained minds and curious mavericks picked up the challenge to understand our universe."

Daily Telegraph Australia

"Arianrhod has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of physics and mathematics, as well as a deep understanding of often very technical subject matter. . . . Arianrhod’s deep research and attention to neglected figures in the history of science, many of them women, is refreshing. . . . Vector is a fascinating read."

Michael Lucy | Australian Book Review

"A vector is quantity that has magnitude and, crucially, direction. This idea has enabled physicists and mathematicians to imagine and describe the world in new dimensions. The author traces the influence of vectors over the past 5,000 years, and why vectors (and tensors) are still relevant today."

The Bookseller

"This remarkable book relates the history of vectors and tensors, including relevant biographical information about the main progenitors of the concepts. The first third of the book is an easy read, with Hamilton’s quaternions playing a leading role in the development of vectors (Hamilton invented the term 'vector'). The narrative then turns to the vector formulation of Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations and the abandonment of quaternions. The final third requires more of the reader; it considers space-time, introduces tensors, describes their role in general relativity, and discusses Noether’s theorems about the association of symmetries with conservation laws."

Mathematics Magazine

"Vector succeeds on several levels, as a stimulating survey of the development of the subject over the centuries, as a reference source for historical work that has been done, and as an accessible exposition of interesting but technical subject matter. In the history of physics and mathematics today the mathematical content is often viewed as something like a black box, with the primary focus being on the professional milieu or biographical and institutional details. It is commendable in a book for a wider audience that so much attention is devoted to looking at the mathematics itself and making it understandable."

Annals of Science

"The story is unravelled in roughly chronological order but there is much more, ranging from how the Mesopotamians organised data tables equations, through to the use of quaternions in internet search engines. We learn about the private lives of many of the protagonists and how many of them died relatively young before they had achieved their full potential. There is also a suitable amount of detail, particularly around tensors, so the reader can appreciate not only why a particular piece of mathematics led to an advance, but also how. The book is beautifully organised and is written with wit and impressive scholarship in both history and mathematics. . . . It would make a super prize or gift for a final-year student in school mathematics. . . . Five stars."

Physics Education

“Everyone understands what it means to move at some particular speed in some particular direction. But it took a long time to start thinking of such behavior in terms of a single clarifying concept, the vector. Arianrhod’s lively and detailed chronicle explains why vectors and tensors are at the heart of our best ways to think about the universe.”

Sean Carroll, author of "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe"

“There have been lots of books about the evolution of modern physics: from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein and on to quantum theory. But seldom does an author pay attention to the mathematical revolutions that made those physical theories possible. Only as the mathematical toolkit expanded from simple scalars to include such tools and ideas as quaternions and vectors and tensors could physicists and mathematicians find the language to describe an increasingly bewildering universe. Arianrhod does a remarkable job telling the story of the mathematical revolution under the hood, the engine that drove the physics revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the result is a book well worth your time.”

Charles Seife, author of "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea"

“With a flair for exposition that makes the complex simple, and a gift for storytelling, Arianrhod is without peer in conveying the beauty, and power, of mathematics. William Rowan Hamilton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein come alive in this dramatic tale of a simple idea that changed our world.”

Amir Alexander, author of "Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World"

“Arianrhod’s Vector, a masterpiece of science exposition, reads as a welcoming cognitive cliffhanger tour of vectors, their generalizations, and their accompanying symbolic tools of mathematical physics, all dovetailing through germane history vignette accounts of astonishing connections and applications.”

Joseph Mazur, author of "The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time"

“‘If all mathematics disappeared,’ physicist Richard Feynman opined, ‘it would set physics back precisely one week.’ To which mathematician Mark Kac retorted, ‘Precisely the week in which God created the world.’ Arianrhod persuades us that vectors and tensors are among those creations. Students and teachers should read this excellent book together.”

Marjorie Senechal, Smith College, editor-in-chief of "The Mathematical Intelligencer"

“Arianrhod shows, with beautiful ease, that maths is not some foreign world only geeks inhabit. It is the world around us.”

Adam Spencer, author of "Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers"