“The Secret Lives of Numbers,” by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell, highlights overlooked contributions to the field by ancient thinkers, non-Westerners and women. By Alec Wilkinson Alec Wilkinson is ...

Picture a cardboard box packed with envelopes, swabs, a comb, nail clippers - you know, stuff you could find in almost any drug store. Well, this box, as mundane as it sounds, represented a revolution ...