John Bolyai’s “Science Absolute of Space.”

Extract

Although some years have elapsed since the first appearance of Professor Halsted’s translations of Lobatchewsky’s Theory of Parallels and John Bolyai’s Science Absolute of Space, they are not so widely known and studied as they deserve to be. There is nothing in the mathematics of these small volumes of a kind to deter any one from reading them; they are short and elementary treatises, disclosing a system of geometry quite distinct from Euclid, by rejecting the axiom concerning parallels. The Science Absolute of Space is a most interesting exposition of one branch of non-Euclidean geometry; but it is unfortunately extremely condensed, and occasionally obscure. It would have been a great advantage if explanatory notes had been added to the English translation.