This book not only attempts a history of contemporary mathematics, but also provides some authoritative guidance through the maze of mathematical theories. It addresses a range of topics from the personal viewpoint of more than forty mathematicians, most of them active researchers and renowned specialists in their fields.
For several centuries, analysis has been one of the most prestigious and important subjects in mathematics. The present book sets off by tracing the evolution of mathematical analysis, and then endeavours to understand the developments of main trends, problems, and conjectures. It features chapters on general topology, 'classical' integration and measure theory, functional analysis, harmonic analysis and Lie groups, theory of functions and analytic geometry, differential and partial differential equations, topological and differential geometry. The ubiquitous presence of analysis also requires the consideration of related topics such as probability theory or algebraic geometry. Each chapter features a comprehensive first part on developments during the period 1900-1950, and then provides outlooks on representative achievements during the later part of the century. The book provides many original quotations from outstanding mathematicians as well as an extensive bibliography of the seminal publications. It will be an interesting and useful reference work for graduate students, lecturers, and all professional mathematicians and other scientists with an interest in the history of mathematics.
This book is a well-informed and detailed analysis of the problems and development of algebraic topology, from Poincaré and Brouwer to Serre, Adams, and Thom. The author has examined each significant paper along this route and describes the steps and strategy of its proofs and its relation to other work. Previously, the history of the many technical developments of 20th-century mathematics had seemed to present insuperable obstacles to scholarship. This book demonstrates in the case of topology how these obstacles can be overcome, with enlightening results.... Within its chosen boundaries the coverage of this book is superb. Read it! —MathSciNet
History of Mathematics is a component of Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on History of Mathematics discusses: Mathematics in Egypt and Mesopotamia; History of Trigonometryto 1550; Mathematics in Japan; The Mathematization of The Physical Sciences-Differential Equations of Nature; A Short History of Dynamical Systems Theory:1885-2007; Measure Theories and Ergodicity Problems; The Number Concept and Number Systems; Operations Research and Mathematical Programming: From War to Academia - A Joint Venture; Elementary Mathematics From An Advanced Standpoint; The History and Concept of Mathematical Proof; Geometry in The 20th Century; Bourbaki: An Epiphenomenon in The History of Mathematics This volume is aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.
The twentieth century was a time of unprecedented development in mathematics, as well as in all sciences: more theorems were proved and results found in a hundred years than in all of previous history. In The Mathematical Century, Piergiorgio Odifreddi distills this unwieldy mass of knowledge into a fascinating and authoritative overview of the subject. He concentrates on thirty highlights of pure and applied mathematics. Each tells the story of an exciting problem, from its historical origins to its modern solution, in lively prose free of technical details. Odifreddi opens by discussing the four main philosophical foundations of mathematics of the nineteenth century and ends by describing the four most important open mathematical problems of the twenty-first century. In presenting the thirty problems at the heart of the book he devotes equal attention to pure and applied mathematics, with applications ranging from physics and computer science to biology and economics. Special attention is dedicated to the famous "23 problems" outlined by David Hilbert in his address to the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900 as a research program for the new century, and to the work of the winners of the Fields Medal, the equivalent of a Nobel prize in mathematics. This eminently readable book will be treasured not only by students and their teachers but also by all those who seek to make sense of the elusive macrocosm of twentieth-century mathematics.
An exploration of the hidden human, emotional, and social dimensions of mathematics Mathematics is often thought of as the coldest expression of pure reason. But few subjects provoke hotter emotions—and inspire more love and hatred—than mathematics. And although math is frequently idealized as floating above the messiness of human life, its story is nothing if not human; often, it is all too human. Loving and Hating Mathematics is about the hidden human, emotional, and social forces that shape mathematics and affect the experiences of students and mathematicians. Written in a lively, accessible style, and filled with gripping stories and anecdotes, Loving and Hating Mathematics brings home the intense pleasures and pains of mathematical life. These stories challenge many myths, including the notions that mathematics is a solitary pursuit and a "young man's game," the belief that mathematicians are emotionally different from other people, and even the idea that to be a great mathematician it helps to be a little bit crazy. Reuben Hersh and Vera John-Steiner tell stories of lives in math from their very beginnings through old age, including accounts of teaching and mentoring, friendships and rivalries, love affairs and marriages, and the experiences of women and minorities in a field that has traditionally been unfriendly to both. Included here are also stories of people for whom mathematics has been an immense solace during times of crisis, war, and even imprisonment—as well as of those rare individuals driven to insanity and even murder by an obsession with math. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand why the most rational of human endeavors is at the same time one of the most emotional.
Numerical analysis has witnessed many significant developments in the 20th century. This book brings together 16 papers dealing with historical developments, survey papers and papers on recent trends in selected areas of numerical analysis, such as: approximation and interpolation, solution of linear systems and eigenvalue problems, iterative methods, quadrature rules, solution of ordinary-, partial- and integral equations. The papers are reprinted from the 7-volume project of the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics on '/homepage/sac/cam/na2000/index.htmlNumerical Analysis 2000'. An introductory survey paper deals with the history of the first courses on numerical analysis in several countries and with the landmarks in the development of important algorithms and concepts in the field.
The Kenneth May Lectures have never before been published in book form Important contributions to the history of mathematics by well-known historians of science Should appeal to a wide audience due to its subject area and accessibility
With the advent of digital computers more than half a century ago, - searchers working in a wide range of scienti?c disciplines have obtained an extremely powerful tool to pursue deep understanding of natural processes in physical, chemical, and biological systems. Computers pose a great ch- lenge to mathematical sciences, as the range of phenomena available for rigorous mathematical analysis has been enormously expanded, demanding the development of a new generation of mathematical tools. There is an explosive growth of new mathematical disciplines to satisfy this demand, in particular related to discrete mathematics. However, it can be argued that at large mathematics is yet to provide the essential breakthrough to meet the challenge. The required paradigm shift in our view should be compa- ble to the shift in scienti?c thinking provided by the Newtonian revolution over 300 years ago. Studies of large-scale random graphs and networks are critical for the progress, using methods of discrete mathematics, probabil- tic combinatorics, graph theory, and statistical physics. Recent advances in large scale random network studies are described in this handbook, which provides a signi?cant update and extension - yond the materials presented in the “Handbook of Graphs and Networks” published in 2003 by Wiley. The present volume puts special emphasis on large-scale networks and random processes, which deemed as crucial for - tureprogressinthe?eld. Theissuesrelatedtorandomgraphsandnetworks pose very di?cult mathematical questions.
