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Published in honor of his 70th birthday, this volume explores and celebrates the work of G.W. (Pete) Stewart, a world-renowned expert in computational linear algebra. This volume includes: forty-four of Stewart's most influential research papers in two subject areas: matrix algorithms, and rounding and perturbation theory; a biography of Stewart; a complete list of his publications, students, and honors; selected photographs; and commentaries on his works in collaboration with leading experts in the field. G.W. Stewart: Selected Works with Commentaries will appeal to graduate students, practitioners, and researchers in computational linear algebra and the history of mathematics. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Europe, 1450 to 1789: An Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 688 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Explores European history from 1450-1789, from the print revolution to the French Revolution. Includes articles written by eminent scholars covering major topics in art, government, and education as well as providing biographical entries on key figures of the period. Also covers topics specific to the era, such as apocalypticism, guilds, food riots, royal mistresses and lovers, the Spanish Inquisition, Utopia and others. ... Read more

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Matroid theory was invented in the middle of the 1930s by two mathematicians independently, namely, Hassler Whitney in the USA and Takeo Nakasawa in Japan. Whitney became famous, but Nakasawa remained anonymous until two decades ago. He left only four papers to the mathematical community, all of them written in the middle of the 1930s. It was a bad time to have lived in a country that had become as eccentric as possible. Just as Nazism became more and more flamboyant in Europe in the 1930s, Japan became more and more esoteric and fanatical in the same time period. This book explains the little that is known about Nakasawa’s personal life in a Japan that had, among other failures, lost control over its military. This book contains his four papers in German and their English translations as well as some extended commentary on the history of Japan during those years. The book also contains 14 photos of him or his family. Although the veil of mystery surrounding Nakasawa’s life has only been partially lifted, the work presented in this book speaks eloquently of a tragic loss to the mathematical community.

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Filmmaker, opera librettist, and Berlin resident Irene Dische turns her satiric brilliance on the most improbable of love stories. With the onset of a debilitating illness, Benedikt, an ascetic mathematician, longs for a child so advertises to adopt a boy. A couple of impoverished Russian refugeesmother and sonrespond. With this unlikely pair, Benedikt ungoes a hilarious, agonizing, sentimental educationset against the chaotic backdrop of reunified Germany. ... Read more

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Evariste Galois' short life was lived against the turbulent background of the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France, the 1830 revolution in Paris and the accession of Louis-Phillipe. This new and scrupulously researched biography of the founder of modern algebra sheds much light on a life led with great intensity and a death met tragically under dark circumstances. Sorting speculation from documented fact, it offers the fullest and most exacting account ever written of Galois' life and work. It took more than seventy years to fully understand the French mathematician's first mémoire (published in 1846) which formulated the famous "Galois theory" concerning the solvability of algebraic equations by radicals, from which group theory would follow. Obscurities in his other writings - mémoires and numerous fragments of extant papers - persist and his ideas challenge mathematicians to this day. Thus scholars will welcome those chapters devoted specifically to explicating all aspects of Galois' work. A comprehensive bibliography enumerates studies by and also those about the mathematician. ... Read more

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An excellent and enjoyable account...
of one of the strangest chapters in the history of mathematics. For those who know of Galois' life only from E.T.Bell's telling this work will hold surprises and serve to part his overly romantic fog with the clear light ofsolid scholarship. ... Read more

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Giacopo Tigor, hero of Peter Stephan Jungk's extraordinary novel, is a professor of mathematics, a proponent of Euclidian geometry reeling from a succession of intellectual defeats sustained at the hands of the advocates of chaos theory. Unable any longer to face the life he has made, he goes AWOL in Europe, first to Paris, where he fulfils a boyhood dream to work in the theatre. But there he also experiences a vision that drives him onward to a greater quest: a journey which takes him to Mount Ararat and beyond, in search of the remains of Noah's Ark. ... Read more

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His ideas turned the mathematical world on its head. As a scientist he should be placed on the same level as Newton and Einstein. This account of Euler's life and livings is embedded in the great political developments of his time, particularly in Austria, Prussia and Russia. The comic by Elena Pini (illustrations) and Alice and Andreas K. Heyne (text) follows the life of the genius from Basel, who, born 300 years ago, would set out to change the scientific world. The book is completed by a short biography of Euler and relevant data of the most important politicians and contemporaries.

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hannibal2rome
Euler was a probably the greatest mathematician in history. Many english would disagree and say it was Isaac Newton. Newton would have been the greatest if he wasnt wasting his time trying to turn lead into gold. ... Read more

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The aim of the School on Rheology of Complex fluids is to bring together young researchers and teachers from educational and R&D institutions, and expose them to the basic concepts and research techniques used in the study of rheological behavior of complex fluids. The lectures will be delivered by well-recognized experts. The book contents will be based on the lecture notes of the school. ... Read more

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Constantin Carathéodory (Berlin 1873-1950 Munich) - Mathematics and Politics in Turbulent Times is a biography of a mathematician who became famous during his life, but has hitherto been ignored by historians for half a century after his death.

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The Italian mathematician Mario Pieri (1860-1913) played an integral part in the research groups of Corrado Segre and Giuseppe Peano, and thus had a significant, yet somewhat underappreciated impact on several branches of mathematics, particularly on the development of algebraic geometry and the foundations of mathematics in the years around the turn of the 20^th century. This book is the first in a series of three volumes that are dedicated to countering that neglect and comprehensively examining Pieri’s life, mathematical work and influence in such diverse fields as mathematical logic, algebraic geometry, number theory, inversive geometry, vector analysis, and differential geometry.

The Legacy of Mario Pieri in Geometry and Arithmetic introduces readers to Pieri’s career and his studies in foundations, from both historical and modern viewpoints, placing his life and research in context and tracing his influence on his contemporaries as well as more recent mathematicians. The text also provides a glimpse of the Italian academic world of Pieri's time, and its relationship with the developing international mathematics community. Included in this volume are the first English translations, along with analyses, of two of his most important axiomatizations—his postulates for arithmetic, which Peano judged superior to his own; and his foundation of elementary geometry on the basis of point and sphere, which Alfred Tarski used as a basis for his own system.

Combining an engaging exposition, little-known historical information, exhaustive references and an excellent index, this text will be of interest to graduate students, researchers and historians with a general knowledge of logic and advanced mathematics, and it requires no specialized experience in mathematical logic or the foundations of geometry.

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This book describes Italian mathematics in the period between the two World Wars. We analyze its development by focusing on both the interior and the external influences. Italian mathematics in that period was shaped by a colorful array of strong personalities who concentrated their efforts on a select number of fields and won international recognition and respect in an incredibly short time. Consequently, Italy was considered a third "mathematical power" after France and Germany, and qualified Italian universities became indispensable stops on the "tour", organized for the improvement of young foreign mathematicians. At that time, Italy was also dominated by a fascist regime. This political situation and the social and academic structure of Italian society are included in the analysis as influences external to mathematics itself. The authors have provided a fascinating study of a most difficult time in the history of the world and of mathematics.

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This book is dedicated to Israel Gohberg on occasion of his 80th birthday on August 23, 2008. It is an expression of esteem and friendship for a great mathematician, a remarkable person and an inspiring colleague. The book contains reflections by Gohberg himself on his own mathematical activities and those of others. It also includes contributions of colleagues and co-workers, both from his time in the Soviet Union and from when he lived and worked in the West. The contributions in question are not mathematical research papers but focus on the man Israel Gohberg and are intended for a wide audience. To be found are letters, speeches, laudatios and reminiscences which, together, present an attractive picture of the way in which Israel Gohberg in the past four to five decades influenced the lives of many mathematicians. Biographical material such as a curriculum vitae, a list of publications, a list of Ph.D. students and information about honorary doctoral degrees is also included.

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This is the story of a remarkable private tutor, William Hopkins, and the education and subsequent careers of a group of his students - so-called Wranglers.

The book takes advantage of first-hand accounts of life at Cambridge to allow the reader a glimpse inside Cambridge’s colleges and, in particular, Hopkins' tutoring rooms. It follows the evolution of the curriculum and the slow reforms that led to Cambridge’s dominance of higher education. It surveys the scientific achievements of the time and looks at the disproportionate contributions made by Scottish and Irish alumni in establishing Cambridge as a research centre for the mathematical and physical sciences.

Hopkins’ influence was far-reaching and the book surveys the careers of some of his best students. We can also see what these students looked like with the reproduction of Hopkins’ own collection of 42 pencil and watercolour portraits of his top students - including GG Stokes, Lord Kelvin, A. Cayley - reproduced here for the first time.

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This book contains a series of research papers on subjects related to the work of Niels Henrik Abel, written by some of the foremost specialists in their fields. Some of the authors have been specifically invited to present papers, discussing the influence of Abel in a mathematical-historical context. Others have submitted papers presented at the Abel Bicentennial Conference, Oslo June 3-8, 2002. The idea behind the book has been to produce a text covering a substantial part of the legacy of Abel, as perceived at the beginning of the 21st century. ... Read more

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This volume is the second of approximately four volumes that the authors plan to write on Ramanujan’s lost notebook, which is broadly interpreted to include all material published in The Lost Notebook and Other Unpublished Papers in 1988.  The primary topics addressed in the authors’ second volume on the lost notebook are q-series, Eisenstein series, and theta functions. Most of the entries on q-series are located in the heart of the original lost notebook, while the entries on Eisenstein series are either scattered in the lost notebook or are found in letters that Ramanujan wrote to G.H. Hardy from nursing homes.

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A renowned mathematician who considers himself both applied and theoretical in his approach, Peter Lax has spent most of his professional career at NYU, making significant contributions to both mathematics and computing. He has written several important published works and has received numerous honors including the National Medal of Science, the Lester R. Ford Award, the Chauvenet Prize, the Semmelweis Medal, the Wiener Prize, and the Wolf Prize. Several students he has mentored have become leaders in their fields.

These two volumes span the years from 1952 up until 1999, and cover many varying topics, from functional analysis, partial differential equations, and numerical methods to conservation laws, integrable systems and scattering theory. After each paper, or collection of papers, is a commentary placing the paper in context and where relevant discussing more recent developments. Many of the papers in these volumes have become classics and should be read by any serious student of these topics. In terms of insight, depth, and breadth, Lax has few equals. The reader of this selecta will quickly appreciate his brilliance as well as his masterful touch. Having this collection of papers in one place allows one to follow the evolution of his ideas and mathematical interests and to appreciate how many of these papers initiated topics that developed lives of their own.

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Customer Reviews (28)

excellent if you have the background to understand it
This book is an excellent and enjoyable survey of a variety of mathematical discoveries all related in one way or other to the gamma constant, a number approximately equal to 0.577 which was discovered by the great 18th century mathematician Leonhard Euler. Topics include logarithms, the harmonic series, the gamma function, the zeta function, and the prime number theorem. The exposition generally follows the historical sequence and culminates in the Riemann Hypothesis and related issues of analytic number theory.

A few of the chapters can be understood with only a high-school algebra background, but most require a background in calculus.

Unfriendly
There is no shortage of good material in this book. The problem is Havil's writing style is very unfriendly it's as if he thinks you already know the material. There are many section that are written badly and are after re-reading several times I still don't understand them. Also this is written for folks who know math very well and I'm one of those folks, yet I find many sections hard to understand. Genius is in taking something complicated and breaking it down and making it simple, which Havil doesn't do. He's no William Dunning.

One of the best popular math books
Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant (Princeton Science Library)
I find many popular math books not very satisfying because they either don't provide advanced enough math subject matter, or their proofs are too sketchy or not intuitive.
Havil's book offers a good balance of entertaining biographical and historical facts, and mathematical material advanced just enough to provide "meat" without it being out of reach for most readers.

The transcendence problem
I have always found Euler's constant interesting because I would like to be able to say that it is one of the 3 great transcendental numbers along with pi and e. The number e is what Kurt Mahler called an S number; perhaps pi and Euler's constant also are. My interest started about 1968 and I was soon led to the gamma and Riemann zeta functions. I am pleased to see that Havil confirms the path I followed.
This is a very interesting book about a relatively unpublicized development of calculus. Admittedly this book requires good skills in mathematics, but let's be candid: a good understanding of mathematics calls for experience in working things out.
Now I must express a disappointment. I bought the book at least in part because I wanted to know the history of attempts at proving (or disproving) the transcendence of Euler's constant. I have found almost nothing. There is a copious history of attempts at proving Fermat's last theorem. Perhaps Euler's constant has just not attracted so very much effort. I do not know of any financial reward that has been offered for Euler's constant. Hilbert in 1900 did not specify this number in his seventh problem. I have not seen this problem emphasized as one for the 21st century.
For some years I thought of questions that might lead to a proof or disproof of transcendence. How long is the shortest proof that Euler's constant is transcendental or not? Can the question be answered in finitely many steps? Is there a number related to Euler's constant in the way that e is related to pi? I did not find these questions mentioned in this book.
It is my hope that some high school student (or even grade school student) will read this book and, perhaps after some 40 years, become the Andrew Wiles of Euler's constant.

An excellent elementary overview of analytic number theory.
This book introduces gamma and zeta functions, an elementary overview of analytic number theory, and a few applications of harmonic series. ... Read more

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This book, written primarily for the young adult reader, tells the life story of Emmy Noether, the most important female mathematician of our time. Because no one expected her to grow into an important scientist, the records of her early life are sketchy. After all, it was assumed that she would grow up to be a wife and mother. Instead, she was a genius who chose a distinctive path. The author has woven this charming story of Emmy Noether’s life around the events that appear in the oral and written records, fleshing out the story with details about life in Germany at the time and what we know about how bright children explore mathematics. ... Read more

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A nice book for the younger reader
This is a fictionalized account of the life of Emy Noether, one of the most famous and influential women mathematicians of all time. It focuses very much on Noether, rather than her mathematics, but it does portray the mathematical environment in which she worked. It is a nice book and the author's affection for Noether shines through clearly. It is well researched and written in a very pleasant style. Destined for the younger reader, it is quite short, and I fear that the more interested reader, however young, will regret the lack of detail. It has a glossary and a good index, but regretfully it doesn't provide a list of references for further details of Noether, her work and her life. ... Read more

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Euler was not only by far the most productive mathematician in the history of mankind, but also one of the greatest scholars of all time. He attained, like only a few scholars, a degree of popularity and fame which may well be compared with that of Galilei, Newton, or Einstein.

Moreover he was a cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word; he lived during his first twenty years in Basel, was active altogether for more than thirty years in Petersburg and for a quarter of a century in Berlin.

Leonhard Euler’s unusually rich life and broadly diversified activity in the immediate vicinity of important personalities which have made history, may well justify an exposition.

This book is based in part on unpublished sources and comes right out of the current research on Euler. It is entirely free of formulae as it has been written for a broad audience with interests in the history of culture and science.

Customer Reviews (2)

English translation of German Euler biography
The translators for this biography of Leonhard Euler (originally published in German) are clearly not 100% fluent in English - but that did not stop me from learning a great deal more about Euler's life than I had known previously.This book includes numerous illustrations of Euler book covers, diagrams from his works, portraits of important persons who lived during Euler's lifetime, etc.There is very little actual math in this book, if that's what you're looking for.However, it does give a good account of all of Euler's major mathematical and scientific contributions.This biography was a very enjoyable and quick read.

A good biography of an important mathematician
This book is an excellent presentation of the story of Euler's life.It includes some bits of humor (like seeing the streets in Basel named respectively Leonhardstrasseand Eulerstrasse as jointly honoring the man although neither street is actually named for the great mathematician).Unlike "Euler the Master of us All," the book is organized around the chronology of his life rather than the concepts he studied, and it includes new details of his life.It also has some wonderful illustrations. ... Read more