Skip to main content
Elsevier
View Cart

Books in Mathematics history and biography

BooksJournals

    • The Julius Petersen Graph Theory Centennial

      • 1st Edition
      • L.D. Andersen + 7 more
      • English
      Julius Petersen's paper, Die Theorie der regulären graphs in Acta Mathematica, volume 15 (1891), stands at the beginning of graph theory as we know it today.The Danish group of graph theorists decided in 1985 to mark the 150th birthday of Petersen in 1989, as well as the centennial of his paper.It was felt that the occasion called for a presentation of Petersen's famous paper in its historical context and, in a wider sense, of Petersen's life and work as a whole. However, the readily available information about Julius Petersen amounted to very little (not even a full bibliography existed) and virtually nothing was known about the circumstances that led him to write his famous paper.The study of Petersen's life and work has resulted in several papers, in particular a biography, a bibliography, an annotated edition of the letters surrounding Petersen's paper of 1891, an analysis of Petersen's paper and an annotated edition of parts of Petersen's correspondence with Sylow on Galois theory. The first four of these papers, together with a survey of matching theory, form the first part of this book. In addition to these five special papers, there are papers submitted in the celebration of the Petersen centennial.

    • Zero

      A Landmark Discovery, the Dreadful Void, and the Ultimate Mind
      • 1st Edition
      • Syamal K. Sen + 1 more
      • English
      Zero indicates the absence of a quantity or a magnitude. It is so deeply rooted in our psyche today that nobody will possibly ask "What is zero?" From the beginning of the very creation of life, the feeling of lack of something or the vision of emptiness/void has been embedded by the creator in all living beings. While recognizing different things as well as the absence of one of these things are easy, it is not so easy to fathom the complete nothingness viz. the universal void. Although we have a very good understanding of nothingness or, equivalently, a zero today, our forefathers had devoted countless hours and arrived at the representation and integration of zero and its compatibility not only with all non-zero numbers but also with all conceivable environments only after many painstaking centuries. Zero can be viewed/perceived in two distinct forms: (i) as a number in our mundane affairs and (ii) as the horrific void or Absolute Reality in the spiritual plane/the ultimate state of mind. Presented are the reasons why zero is a landmark discovery and why it has the potential to conjure up in an intense thinker the dreadful nothingness unlike those of other numbers such as 1, 2, and 3. Described are the representation of zero and its history including its deeper understanding via calculus, its occurrences and various roles in different countries as well as in sciences/engineering along with a stress on the Indian zero that is accepted as the time-invariant unique absolute zero. This is followed by the significant distinction between mathematics and computational mathematics and the concerned differences between the unique absolute zero and non-unique relative numerical zeros and their impact and importance in computations on a digital computer.

    • Regiomontanus: His Life and Work

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 1
      • E. Zinner + 1 more
      • English
      The 500th anniversary of Regiomontanus's birth has occasioned this depiction of his life and work. It is the first English translation of Ernst Zinner's monumental biography, plus a number of specially-written supplementary articles which help paint a more comprehensive picture of the current state of knowledge about Regiomontanus. The articles show the high regard in which the biography is still held by the community of scholars doing work on the mathematics of the Renaissance.Zinner's biography is a mine of information about early printing, astrolabes, tables of eclipses and the world of Henry of Langenstein, Johann of Gmunden, Georg Peuerbach, Cardinal Bessarion, Nicholas of Cusa and the extraordinary itinerant scholar, Johannes Müller of Königsberg — Regiomontanus. His contributions to mathematics are discussed (for example, he may have discovered the fifth and sixth perfect numbers) as well as the mysteries surrounding his life and death.

    • Alan Turing

      His Work and Impact
      • 1st Edition
      • S. Barry Cooper + 1 more
      • English
      In this 2013 winner of the prestigious R.R. Hawkins Award from the Association of American Publishers, as well as the 2013 PROSE Awards for Mathematics and Best in Physical Sciences & Mathematics, also from the AAP, readers will find many of the most significant contributions from the four-volume set of the Collected Works of A. M. Turing. These contributions, together with commentaries from current experts in a wide spectrum of fields and backgrounds, provide insight on the significance and contemporary impact of Alan Turing's work. Offering a more modern perspective than anything currently available, Alan Turing: His Work and Impact gives wide coverage of the many ways in which Turing's scientific endeavors have impacted current research and understanding of the world. His pivotal writings on subjects including computing, artificial intelligence, cryptography, morphogenesis, and more display continued relevance and insight into today's scientific and technological landscape. This collection provides a great service to researchers, but is also an approachable entry point for readers with limited training in the science, but an urge to learn more about the details of Turing's work.

    • Leonhard Euler

      Life, Work and Legacy
      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 5
      • Robert E. Bradley + 1 more
      • English
      The year 2007 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of one of the Enlightenment’s most important mathematicians and scientists, Leonhard Euler. This volume is a collection of 24 essays by some of the world’s best Eulerian scholars from seven different countries about Euler, his life and his work. Some of the essays are historical, including much previously unknown information about Euler’s life, his activities in the St. Petersburg Academy, the influence of the Russian Princess Dashkova, and Euler’s philosophy. Others describe his influence on the subsequent growth of European mathematics and physics in the 19th century. Still others give technical details of Euler’s innovations in probability, number theory, geometry, analysis, astronomy, mechanics and other fields of mathematics and science.

    • Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics 1640-1940

      • 1st Edition
      • Ivor Grattan-Guinness
      • English
      This book contains around 80 articles on major writings in mathematics published between 1640 and 1940. All aspects of mathematics are covered: pure and applied, probability and statistics, foundations and philosophy. Sometimes two writings from the same period and the same subject are taken together. The biography of the author(s) is recorded, and the circumstances of the preparation of the writing are given. When the writing is of some lengths an analytical table of its contents is supplied. The contents of the writing is reviewed, and its impact described, at least for the immediate decades. Each article ends with a bibliography of primary and secondary items.

    • Mathematics and the Divine

      A Historical Study
      • 1st Edition
      • Teun Koetsier + 1 more
      • English
      Mathematics and the Divine seem to correspond to diametrically opposed tendencies of the human mind. Does the mathematician not seek what is precisely defined, and do the objects intended by the mystic and the theologian not lie beyond definition? Is mathematics not Man's search for a measure, and isn’t the Divine that which is immeasurable ?The present book shows that the domains of mathematics and the Divine, which may seem so radically separated, have throughout history and across cultures, proved to be intimately related. Religious activities such as the building of temples, the telling of ritual stories or the drawing of enigmatic figures all display distinct mathematical features. Major philosophical systems dealing with the Absolute and theological speculations focussing on our knowledge of the Ultimate have been based on or inspired by mathematics. A series of chapters by an international team of experts highlighting key figures, schools and trains of thought is presented here. Chinese number mysticism, the views of Pythagoras and Plato and their followers, Nicholas of Cusa's theological geometry, Spinozism and intuitionism as a philosophy of mathematics are treated side by side among many other themes in an attempt at creating a global view on the relation of mathematics and Man’s quest for the Absolute in the course of history.

    • Mathematical Logic

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 4
      • R.O. Gandy + 1 more
      • English
      Mathematical Logic is a collection of the works of one of the leading figures in 20th-century science. This collection of A.M. Turing's works is intended to include all his mature scientific writing, including a substantial quantity of unpublished material. His work in pure mathematics and mathematical logic extended considerably further; the work of his last years, on morphogenesis in plants, is also of the greatest originality and of permanent importance. This book is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on computability and ordinal logics and covers Turing's work between 1937 and 1938. The second part covers type theory; it provides a general introduction to Turing's work on type theory and covers his published and unpublished works between 1941 and 1948. Finally, the third part focuses on enigmas, mysteries, and loose ends. This concluding section of the book discusses Turing's Treatise on the Enigma, with excerpts from the Enigma Paper. It also delves into Turing's papers on programming and on minimum cost sequential analysis, featuring an excerpt from the unpublished manuscript. This book will be of interest to mathematicians, logicians, and computer scientists.

    • Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science IX

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 134
      • D. Prawitz + 2 more
      • English
      This volume is the product of the Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and contains the text of most of the invited lectures. Divided into 15 sections, the book covers a wide range of different issues. The reader is given the opportunity to learn about the latest thinking in relevant areas other than those in which they themselves may normally specialise.