The recent book of Christine Phili does not constitute a biographical collection concerning the activities of mathematicians of various periods. Her research focuses on a specific point of view regarding the involvement of certain mathematicians with sovereignty of their rulers in various aspects from the fourth century to the twentieth.
Mathematicians such as Hypatia and Galileo were confronted with the merciless punishment of their rulers. Others, such as Leibniz, Euler and Carathéodory were accepted as reformers of the State. Viète, Wallis and Monge served the Valois' House, the Stuarts and Napoleon the Great respectively. Cauchy destroyed his academic career by remaining faithful to his oath regarding the Bourbon's Dynasty, while Fourier abandoned Napoleon the Great and became a royalist. Omar Khayyam tried to do mathematics in the court of the Seldjuks during their struggle to gain the throne.
Bernard Bolzano the great reformer of mathematical analysis as well as philosopher, theologian and logician was dismissed from the University of Prague due to his democratic ideals which confronted Metternich's laws known as the Karlsbad laws.(1819).
The persecutions of Jewish mathematicians during the epoch of Fascism and the Third Reich as well as these of Egorov and Luzin after the Bolshevik Revolution have been minutely analysed.
It must be stressed that the relationship of Sovereignty and Mathematics has deep roots as mostly exemplified by Plato, who chose the future servants of the State according to their progress in mathematics.