An easy to read novel and smart enough

This novel describes the parallel destinies of Humbolt, explorer, and Gauss, mathematician. The author describes in a pleasant style adventures of the respective historical celebrities. One is a champion of induction and travels the world tirelessly; the other is a prodigy of deduction and includes any faster than others. The meeting between these two visions and two beings apart occurs at the end of the novel. A slight irony and humor discreet travel the book, the author enjoying a few centuries later to make fun of the 19th century. Mixing and critical social, description of two geniuses and two conceptions of science, often showing a certain poetry, Measuring the World is easy reading, informative and smart enough. The translation seems only fair.