Leila Schneps - Böcker

In the wrong hands, math can be deadly. Even the simplest numbers can become powerful forces when manipulated by politicians or the media, but in the case of the law, your liberty,and your life,can depend on the right calculation.In Math on Trial , mathematicians Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez describe ten trials spanning from the nineteenth century to today, in which mathematical arguments were used,and disastrously misused,as evidence. They tell the stories of Sally Clark, who was accused of murdering her children by a doctor with a faulty sense of calculation of nineteenth-century tycoon Hetty Green, whose dispute over her aunt's will became a signal case in the forensic use of mathematics and of the case of Amanda Knox, in which a judge's misunderstanding of probability led him to discount critical evidence,which might have kept her in jail. Offering a fresh angle on cases from the nineteenth-century Dreyfus affair to the murder trial of Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk, Schneps and Colmez show how the improper application of mathematical concepts can mean the difference between walking free and life in prison.A colourful narrative of mathematical abuse, Math on Trial blends courtroom drama, history, and math to show that legal expertise isn't always enough to prove a person innocent.

This book contains eight expository articles by well-known authors of the theory of Galois groups and fundamental groups. They focus on presenting developments, avoiding classical aspects which have already been described at length in the standard literature. The volume grew from the special semester held at the MSRI in Berkeley in 1999 and many of the results are due to work accomplished during that program. Among the subjects covered are elliptic surfaces, Grothendieck's anabelian conjecture, fundamental groups of curves and differential Galois theory in positive characteristic. Although the articles contain fresh results, the authors have striven to make them as introductory as possible, making them accessible to graduate students as well as researchers in algebraic geometry and number theory. The volume also contains a lengthy overview by Leila Schneps that sets the individual articles into the broader context of contemporary research in Galois groups.

Dessins d'Enfants are combinatorial objects, namely drawings with vertices and edges on topological surfaces. Their interest lies in their relation with the set of algebraic curves defined over the closure of the rationals, and the corresponding action of the absolute Galois group on them. The study of this group via such realted combinatorial methods as its action on the Dessins and on certain fundamental groups of moduli spaces was initiated by Alexander Grothendieck in his unpublished Esquisse d'un Programme, and developed by many of the mathematicians who have contributed to this volume. The various articles here unite all of the basics of the subject as well as the most recent advances. Researchers in number theory, algebraic geometry or related areas of group theory will find much of interest in this book.

This book surveys progress in the domains described in the hitherto unpublished manuscript 'Esquisse d'un Programme' (Sketch of a Program) by Alexander Grothendieck. It will be of wide interest amongst workers in algebraic geometry, number theory, algebra and topology.

The first of two companion volumes on anabelian algebraic geometry, this book contains the famous, but hitherto unpublished manuscript 'Esquisse d'un Programme' (Sketch of a Program) by Alexander Grothendieck. This work, written in 1984, fourteen years after his retirement from public life in mathematics, together with the closely connected letter to Gerd Faltings, dating from 1983 and also published for the first time in this volume, describe a powerful program of future mathematics, unifying aspects of geometry and arithmetic via the central point of moduli spaces of curves; it is written in an artistic and informal style. The book also contains several articles on subjects directly related to the ideas explored in the manuscripts; these are surveys of mathematics due to Grothendieck, explanations of points raised in the Esquisse, and surveys on progress in the domains described there.

This book contains eight expository articles by well-known authors of the theory of Galois groups and fundamental groups. They focus on presenting developments, avoiding classical aspects which have already been described at length in the standard literature. The volume grew from the special semester held at the MSRI in Berkeley in 1999 and many of the results are due to work accomplished during that program. Among the subjects covered are elliptic surfaces, Grothendieck's anabelian conjecture, fundamental groups of curves and differential Galois theory in positive characteristic. Although the articles contain fresh results, the authors have striven to make them as introductory as possible, making them accessible to graduate students as well as researchers in algebraic geometry and number theory. The volume also contains a lengthy overview by Leila Schneps that sets the individual articles into the broader context of contemporary research in Galois groups.

Since the early 2000s, a growing body of scientific studies in neuropathology, neurology, neurosurgery, biomechanics, statistics, criminology and psychology has cast doubt on the forensic reliability of medical determinations of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), more recently termed Abusive Head Trauma (AHT). Studies have increasingly documented that accidental short falls and a wide range of medical conditions, can cause the same symptoms and findings associated with this syndrome. Nevertheless, inaccurate diagnoses, unrealistic confidence expression, and wrongful convictions continue to this day. Bringing together contributions from a multidisciplinary expert panel of 32 professionals across 8 countries in 16 different specialties, this landmark book tackles the highly controversial topic of SBS, which lies at the intersection of medicine, science, and law. With comprehensive coverage across multiple disciplines, it explains the scientific evidence challenging SBS and advances efforts to evaluate how deaths and serious brain injuries in infants should be analysed and investigated.

Covering topics in graph theory, L-functions, p-adic geometry, Galois representations, elliptic fibrations, genus 3 curves and bad reduction, harmonic analysis, symplectic groups and mould combinatorics, this volume presents a collection of papers covering a wide swath of number theory emerging from the third iteration of the international Women in Numbers conference, “Women in Numbers - Europe” (WINE), held on October 14–18, 2013 at the CIRM-Luminy mathematical conference center in France. While containing contributions covering a wide range of cutting-edge topics in number theory, the volume emphasizes those concrete approaches that make it possible for graduate students and postdocs to begin work immediately on research problems even in highly complex subjects.

Covering topics in graph theory, L-functions, p-adic geometry, Galois representations, elliptic fibrations, genus 3 curves and bad reduction, harmonic analysis, symplectic groups and mould combinatorics, this volume presents a collection of papers covering a wide swath of number theory emerging from the third iteration of the international Women in Numbers conference, “Women in Numbers - Europe” (WINE), held on October 14–18, 2013 at the CIRM-Luminy mathematical conference center in France. While containing contributions covering a wide range of cutting-edge topics in number theory, the volume emphasizes those concrete approaches that make it possible for graduate students and postdocs to begin work immediately on research problems even in highly complex subjects.