Emergence of the Theory of Lie Groups An Essay in the History of Mathematics 1869–1926

"....this study is just as clearly a stunning achievement. Few historians of mathematics have made a serious attempt to cross the bridge joining the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and those who have made the journey have tended to avert their eyes from the mainstream traffic....the single greatest merit of Hawkins' book is that the author tries to place the reader in the middle of the action, offering a close up look at how mathematics gets made...Hawkins' account of this strange but wonderful saga resurrects a heroic chapter in the history of mathematics. For anyone with a serious interest in the rich background developments that led to modern Lie theory, this book should be browsed, read, savored, and read again."

-Notices of the AMS