Amir Alexander (Hebrew: אמיר אלכסנדר) is a historian, author, and academic who studies the interconnections between mathematics and its cultural and historical setting.

from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1988 in mathematics and history, before moving to the United States, where he obtained an M.A.

[4][6] The book describes the 17th century English exploration of the Americas, the early exploration by English mathematicians of infinitesimals, and the relationship between the two, and argued that "If a strong relationship can be established between an historically specific nonmathematical tale and the narrative of a mathematical work that originated within its social sphere, then mathematics can indeed be said to be fundamentally shaped by its social and cultural setting.

[8][9] The book begins describing the death of Evariste Galois in a duel in 1832 and makes the argument that the ideas and culture of the Romantic age influenced the way mathematicians saw themselves and the very mathematics that they created.

[10][11][12] The book returns to the topic of the history of the study of infinitesimals in the 17th century, and locates arguments about the validity of the mathematical concept in the struggles between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the accompanying political struggles between authoritarian and more pluralistic approaches to governing.