Jeremy Gray - Böcker

David Hilbert was arguably the leading mathematician of his generation. He was among the few mathematicians who could reshape mathematics, and was able to because he brought together an impressive technical power and mastery of detail with a vision of where the subject was going and how it should get there. This was the unique combination which he brought to the setting of his famous 23 Problems. Few problems in mathematics have the status of those posed by David Hilbert in 1900. Mathematicians have made their reputations by solving individual ones such as Fermat's last theorem, and several remain unsolved including the Riemann hypotheses, which has eluded all the great minds of this century. A hundred years on, it is timely to take a fresh look at the problems, the man who set them, and the reasons for their lasting impact on the mathematics of the twentieth century. In this fascinating new book, Jeremy Gray and David Rowe consider what has made this the pre-eminent collection of problems in mathematics, what they tell us about what drives mathematicians, and the nature of reputation, influence and power in the world of modern mathematics. The book is written in a clear and lively manner and will appeal both to the general reader with an interest in mathematics and to mathematicians themselves.

The history of the development of Euclidean, non-Euclidean, and relativistic ideas of the shape of the universe, is presented in this lively account by Jeremy Gray.The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry occupies a unique position in the history of mathematics. In this book, Jeremy Gray reviews the failure of classical attempts to prove the postulate and then proceeds to show how the work of Gauss, Lobachevskii, and Bolyai, laid the foundations of modern differential geometry, by constructing geometries in which the parallel postulate fails. These investigations in turn enabled the formulation of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, which today form the basis of our conception of the universe.The author has made every attempt to keep the pre-requisites to a bare minimum. This immensely readable account, contains historical and mathematical material which make it suitable for undergraduate students in the history of science and mathematics.For the second edition, the author has taken the opportunity to update much of the material, and to add a chapter on the emerging story of the Arabic contribution to this fascinating aspect of the history of mathematics.

This volume contains approximately fifty articles that were published in "The Mathematical Intelligencer" during its first eighteen years. The selection exhibits the wide variety of attractive articles that have appeared over the years, ranging from general interest articles of a historical nature to lucid expositions of important current discoveries. The articles are introduced by the editors.

Plato's Ghost is the first book to examine the development of mathematics from 1880 to 1920 as a modernist transformation similar to those in art, literature, and music. Jeremy Gray traces the growth of mathematical modernism from its roots in problem solving and theory to its interactions with physics, philosophy, theology, psychology, and ideas about real and artificial languages. He shows how mathematics was popularized, and explains how mathematical modernism not only gave expression to the work of mathematicians and the professional image they sought to create for themselves, but how modernism also introduced deeper and ultimately unanswerable questions. Plato's Ghost evokes Yeats's lament that any claim to worldly perfection inevitably is proven wrong by the philosopher's ghost; Gray demonstrates how modernist mathematicians believed they had advanced further than anyone before them, only to make more profound mistakes. He tells for the first time the story of these ambitious and brilliant mathematicians, including Richard Dedekind, Henri Lebesgue, Henri Poincare, and many others.He describes the lively debates surrounding novel objects, definitions, and proofs in mathematics arising from the use of naive set theory and the revived axiomatic method--debates that spilled over into contemporary arguments in philosophy and the sciences and drove an upsurge of popular writing on mathematics. And he looks at mathematics after World War I, including the foundational crisis and mathematical Platonism. Plato's Ghost is essential reading for mathematicians and historians, and will appeal to anyone interested in the development of modern mathematics.

Henri Poincare (1854-1912) was not just one of the most inventive, versatile, and productive mathematicians of all time--he was also a leading physicist who almost won a Nobel Prize for physics and a prominent philosopher of science whose fresh and surprising essays are still in print a century later. The first in-depth and comprehensive look at his many accomplishments, Henri Poincare explores all the fields that Poincare touched, the debates sparked by his original investigations, and how his discoveries still contribute to society today. Math historian Jeremy Gray shows that Poincare's influence was wide-ranging and permanent. His novel interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry challenged contemporary ideas about space, stirred heated discussion, and led to flourishing research. His work in topology began the modern study of the subject, recently highlighted by the successful resolution of the famous Poincare conjecture. And Poincare's reformulation of celestial mechanics and discovery of chaotic motion started the modern theory of dynamical systems.In physics, his insights on the Lorentz group preceded Einstein's, and he was the first to indicate that space and time might be fundamentally atomic. Poincare the public intellectual did not shy away from scientific controversy, and he defended mathematics against the attacks of logicians such as Bertrand Russell, opposed the views of Catholic apologists, and served as an expert witness in probability for the notorious Dreyfus case that polarized France. Richly informed by letters and documents, Henri Poincare demonstrates how one man's work revolutionized math, science, and the greater world.

A comprehensive look at the mathematics, physics, and philosophy of Henri PoincaréHenri Poincaré (1854–1912) was not just one of the most inventive, versatile, and productive mathematicians of all time—he was also a leading physicist who almost won a Nobel Prize for physics and a prominent philosopher of science whose fresh and surprising essays are still in print a century later. The first in-depth and comprehensive look at his many accomplishments, Henri Poincaré explores all the fields that Poincaré touched, the debates sparked by his original investigations, and how his discoveries still contribute to society today.Math historian Jeremy Gray shows that Poincaré's influence was wide-ranging and permanent. His novel interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry challenged contemporary ideas about space, stirred heated discussion, and led to flourishing research. His work in topology began the modern study of the subject, recently highlighted by the successful resolution of the famous Poincaré conjecture. And Poincaré's reformulation of celestial mechanics and discovery of chaotic motion started the modern theory of dynamical systems. In physics, his insights on the Lorentz group preceded Einstein's, and he was the first to indicate that space and time might be fundamentally atomic. Poincaré the public intellectual did not shy away from scientific controversy, and he defended mathematics against the attacks of logicians such as Bertrand Russell, opposed the views of Catholic apologists, and served as an expert witness in probability for the notorious Dreyfus case that polarized France.Richly informed by letters and documents, Henri Poincaré demonstrates how one man's work revolutionized math, science, and the greater world.

Plato's Ghost is the first book to examine the development of mathematics from 1880 to 1920 as a modernist transformation similar to those in art, literature, and music. Jeremy Gray traces the growth of mathematical modernism from its roots in problem solving and theory to its interactions with physics, philosophy, theology, psychology, and ideas about real and artificial languages. He shows how mathematics was popularized, and explains how mathematical modernism not only gave expression to the work of mathematicians and the professional image they sought to create for themselves, but how modernism also introduced deeper and ultimately unanswerable questions.Plato's Ghost evokes Yeats's lament that any claim to worldly perfection inevitably is proven wrong by the philosopher's ghost; Gray demonstrates how modernist mathematicians believed they had advanced further than anyone before them, only to make more profound mistakes. He tells for the first time the story of these ambitious and brilliant mathematicians, including Richard Dedekind, Henri Lebesgue, Henri Poincaré, and many others. He describes the lively debates surrounding novel objects, definitions, and proofs in mathematics arising from the use of naïve set theory and the revived axiomatic method—debates that spilled over into contemporary arguments in philosophy and the sciences and drove an upsurge of popular writing on mathematics. And he looks at mathematics after World War I, including the foundational crisis and mathematical Platonism.Plato's Ghost is essential reading for mathematicians and historians, and will appeal to anyone interested in the development of modern mathematics.

This book is a study of how a particular vision of the unity of mathematics, often called geometric function theory, was created in the 19th century. The central focus is on the convergence of three mathematical topics: the hypergeometric and related linear differential equations, group theory, and on-Euclidean geometry.The text for this second edition has been greatly expanded and revised, and the existing appendices enriched with historical accounts of the Riemann–Hilbert problem, the uniformization theorem, Picard–Vessiot theory, and the hypergeometric equation in higher dimensions. The exercises have been retained, making it possible to use the book as a companion to mathematics courses at the graduate level.

Lyme borreliosis commonly known as lyme disease is now acknowledged as the most highly prevalent arthropod-borne human disease in northern temperate regions of the world. This book describes the basic characteristics of the disease, the biology of the pathogens in their vectors and vertebrate hosts, their ecology in different regions of the world and the global epidemiology of the disease. The final chapters address the prevention and control measures that have resulted from this knowledge.

Based on the latest historical research, Worlds Out of Nothing is the first book to provide a course on the history of geometry in the 19th century. Topics covered in the first part of the book are projective geometry, especially the concept of duality, and non-Euclidean geometry. The book then moves on to the study of the singular points of algebraic curves (Plücker’s equations) and their role in resolving a paradox in the theory of duality; to Riemann’s work on differential geometry; and to Beltrami’s role in successfully establishing non-Euclidean geometry as a rigorous mathematical subject. The final part of the book considers how projective geometry rose to prominence, and looks at Poincaré’s ideas about non-Euclidean geometry and their physical and philosophical significance. Three chapters are devoted to writing and assessing work in the history of mathematics, with examples of sample questions in the subject, advice on how to write essays, and comments on what instructors should be looking for.

Approximately fifty articles that were published in The Mathematical Intelligencer during its first eighteen years. The selection demonstrates the wide variety of attractive articles that have appeared over the years, ranging from general interest articles of a historical nature to lucid expositions of important current discoveries. Each article is introduced by the editors. "...The Mathematical Intelligencer publishes stylish, well-illustrated articles, rich in ideas and usually short on proofs...Many, but not all articles fall within the reach of the advanced undergraduate mathematics major...This book makes a nice addition to any undergraduate mathematics collection that does not already sport back issues of The Mathematical Intelligencer." D.V. Feldman, University of New Hamphire, CHOICE Reviews, June 2001.

Our main purpose in this book is to present an English translation of Desargues' Rough Draft of an Essay on the results of taking plane sections of a cone (1639), the pamphlet with which the modem study of projective geometry began. Despite its acknowledged importance in the history of mathematics, the work has never been translated before in its entirety, although short extracts have appeared in several source books. The problems of making Desargues' work accessible to modem mathematicians and historians of mathematics have led us to provide a fairly elaborate introduction, and to include translations of other relevant works. The translation ofthe Rough Draft on Conics (as we shall call it) thus appears in Chapter VI, the five preceding chapters forming an introduction and the three following ones giving translations of other works by Desargues. Chapter I briefly reviews parts of ancient geometrical works available to Desargues which seem to be relevant to his own work, namely theorems in Euclid's Elements, the first four books of Apollonius' Conics and some remarks by Pappus in his Collection. These Hellenistic works belong to the 'high' mathematical tradition whose development has been the main theme of all histories of mathematics. It is from these works that Desargues took the theorems whose theory he was to reformulate in the Rough Draft on Conics.

?This book is a history of complex function theory from its origins to 1914, when the essential features of the modern theory were in place.

The History of Mathematics: A Source-Based Approach is a comprehensive history of the development of mathematics. The first volume of the two-volume set takes readers from the beginning of counting in prehistory to 1600 and the threshold of the discovery of calculus. It is notable for the extensive engagement with original-primary and secondary-source material. The coverage is worldwide, and embraces developments, including education, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, China, India, the Islamic world and Europe. The emphasis on astronomy and its historical relationship to mathematics is new, and the presentation of every topic is informed by the most recent scholarship in the field.The second volume takes the reader from the invention of the calculus to the beginning of the twentieth century. The initial discoverers of calculus are given thorough investigation, and special attention is also paid to Newton's Principia. The eighteenth century is presented as primarily a period of the development of calculus, particularly in differential equations and applications of mathematics. Mathematics blossomed in the nineteenth century and the book explores progress in geometry, analysis, foundations, algebra, and applied mathematics, especially celestial mechanics. The approach throughout is markedly historiographic: How do we know what we know? How do we read the original documents? What are the institutions supporting mathematics? Who are the people of mathematics? The reader learns not only the history of mathematics, but also how to think like a historian.The two-volume set was designed as a textbook for the authors' acclaimed year-long course at the Open University. It is, in addition to being an innovative and insightful textbook, an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the history of mathematics. The authors, each among the most distinguished mathematical historians in the world, have produced over fifty books and earned scholarly and expository prizes from the major mathematical societies of the English-speaking world.

​This book is a history of complex function theory from its origins to 1914, when the essential features of the modern theory were in place. It is the first history of mathematics devoted to complex function theory, and it draws on a wide range of published and unpublished sources. In addition to an extensive and detailed coverage of the three founders of the subject – Cauchy, Riemann, and Weierstrass – it looks at the contributions of authors from d’Alembert to Hilbert, and Laplace to Weyl. Particular chapters examine the rise and importance of elliptic function theory, differential equations in the complex domain, geometric function theory, and the early years of complex function theory in several variables. Unique emphasis has been devoted to the creation of a textbook tradition in complex analysis by considering some seventy textbooks in nine different languages. The book is not a mere sequence of disembodied results and theories, but offers a comprehensive picture of the broad cultural and social context in which the main actors lived and worked by paying attention to the rise of mathematical schools and of contrasting national traditions. The book is unrivaled for its breadth and depth, both in the core theory and its implications for other fields of mathematics. It documents the motivations for the early ideas and their gradual refinement into a rigorous theory.​

It’s one thing for a doctor to support in theory a terminally ill patient’s right to die with dignity, quite another to be the person asked to end their brother’s suffering. When Robert, a doctor, learns that his older brother Jim, a successful rock ’n’ roll pianist he hasn’t seen in more than 20 years, has returned to England from the USA, he and his wife Barbara go to see him. While there, Jim’s wife Scarlet confirms Robert’s suspicion that Jim is in the advanced stages of cancer. Robert, against Barbara’s strongly held views, is on the verge of signing an open letter that will call for a public conversation about assisted dying, and finds himself moving quickly from supporting the idea in theory to confronting the thought of ending a person’s life in reality. While Robert and Scarlet are drawn together, the conflicting feelings Robert and Jim have about their childhood culminate in a fierce row and Robert storms out. Jim becomes desperate for his brother to bring an end to his suffering before he loses the ability to play music, and Barbara urges Robert not to do anything that will destroy her trust in him. Robert is drawn back to visit Jim again, but will he risk sacrificing everything he’s ever worked for – his career, his marriage, even his freedom – for a brother he barely knows?

Based on a course for third-year university students, the book contains numerous historical and mathematical exercises, offers extensive advice to the student on how to write essays, and can easily be used in whole or in part as a course in the history of mathematics.

This book is a compact clinical introduction to Lyme borreliosis for physicians of all specialties who care for patients with suspected B.

This book is a compact clinical introduction to Lyme borreliosis for physicians of all specialties who care for patients with suspected B.

Dieses Buch ist eine kompakte klinische Einführung in die Lyme-Borreliose für Ärzte aller Fachrichtungen, die Patienten mit Verdacht auf B. burgdorferi-Infektion betreuen, sei es im Krankenhaus oder in der Allgemeinpraxis. Das Buch bietet viele praxisorientierte Informationen zu Symptomatik, Diagnose, Behandlung und Prophylaxe mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf der Situation in Europa. Gleichzeitig beschreibt es den aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Kenntnisstand so detailliert, wie es für das Verständnis der pathogenetischen Zusammenhänge und deren Relevanz für die medizinische Versorgung erforderlich ist. Die Autoren sind Mitglieder einer interdisziplinären Expertengruppe von Epidemiologen, Biologen, Mikrobiologen und Klinikern, die seit vielen Jahren auf dem Gebiet der zeckenübertragenen Krankheiten tätig sind. Die persönliche Erfahrung jedes einzelnen Autors, die er durch die tägliche Arbeit mit Patienten in Spezialkliniken oder durch die Konfrontation mit komplizierten Fragen der Grundlagenforschung, Epidemiologie und Labordiagnostik der Lyme-Borreliose gesammelt hat, stellt eine wichtige Stütze des Buches dar. Aus dem Blickwinkel des klinischen Managements und der praktischen Problemlösung geschrieben, wird diese aktuelle Monographie den Kliniker bei der Bewältigung diagnostischer Herausforderungen und der angemessenen medizinischen Versorgung von Patienten mit Lyme-Borreliose unterstützen.

This book contains a history of real and complex analysis in the nineteenth century, from the work of Lagrange and Fourier to the origins of set theory and the modern foundations of analysis.