Interestingly, around the same time the book these equations were originally collected in (as pointed out in another comment, this is Ian Stewart's In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World), the book Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers also came out. They were actually published ~5 months apart, but I remember them being close together on Amazon recommendations, list of other books people viewed, etc. at the time.

I haven't read that one either. Looking at the index quickly, it doesn't look like Simplex is in there.