Who gave you the epsilon? : and other tales of mathematical history / edited by Marlow Anderson, Victor Katz, Robin Wilson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Anderson, Marlow, 1950- editor.

Katz, Victor J., editor.

Wilson, Robin J., editor.

Series:

MAA spectrum.

Spectrum series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics--History.

Mathematics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 431 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Who gave you the epsilon? & other tales of mathematical history

Place of Publication:

Washington : Mathematical Association of America, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Who Gave You the Epsilon? is a sequel to the MAA bestselling book, Sherlock Holmes in Babylon. Like its predecessor, this book is a collection of articles on the history of mathematics from the MAA journals, in many cases written by distinguished mathematicians (such as G H Hardy and B. van der Waerden), with commentary by the editors. Whereas the former book covered the history of mathematics from earliest times up to the eighteenth century and was organized chronologically, the 40 articles in this book are organized thematically and continue the story into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The topics covered in the book are analysis and applied mathematics, Geometry, topology and foundations, Algebra and number theory, and Surveys. Each chapter is preceded by a Foreword, giving the historical background and setting and the scene, and is followed by an Afterword, reporting on advances in our historical knowledge and understanding since the articles first appeared.

Contents:

[Pt. 1.] Analysis

Who gave you the epsilon? : Cauchy and the origins of rigorous calculus / Judith V. Grabiner

Evolution of the function concept : a brief survey / Israel Kleiner

S. Kovalevsky : a mathematical lesson / Karen D. Rappaport

Highlights in the history of spectral theory / L.A. Steen

Alan Turing and the central limit theorem / S.L. Zabell

Why did George Green write his essay of 1828 on electricity and magnetism? / I. Grattan-Guinness

Connectivity and smoke-rings : Green's second identity in its first fifty years / Thomas Archibald

The history of Stokes' theorem / Victor J. Katz

The mathematical collaboration of M.L. Cartwright and J.E. Littlewood / Shawnee L. McMurran and James J. Tattersall

Dr. David Harold Blackwell, African American pioneer / Nkechi Agwu, Luella Smith and Aissatou Barry

[pt. 2.] Geometry, topology and foundations

Gauss and the non-Euclidean geometry / George Bruce Halsted

History of the parallel postulate / Florence P. Lewis

The rise and fall of projective geometry / J.L. Coolidge

Notes on the history of geometrical ideas / Dan Pedoe

A note on the history of the Cantor set and Cantor function / Julian F. Fleron

Evolution of the topological concept of "connected" / R.L. Wilder

A brief, subjective history of homology and homotopy theory in this century / Peter Hilton

The origins of modern axiomatics : Pasch to Peano / H.C. Kennedy

C.S. Pierce's philosophy of infinite sets / Joseph W. Dauben

On the development of logics between the two world wars / I. Grattan-Guinness

Dedekind's theorem : [square root of 2] x [square root of 3] = [square root of 6] / David Fowler

[pt. 3.] Algebra and number theory

Hamilton's discovery of quaternions / B.L. van der Waerden

Hamilton, Rodrigues, and the quaternion scandal / Simon L. Altmann

Building an international reputation : the case of J.J. Sylvester (1814-1897) / Karen Hunger Parshall and Eugene Seneta

The foundation period in the history of group theory / Josephine E. Burns

The evolution of group theory : a brief survey / Israel Kleiner

The search for finite simple groups / Joseph A. Gallian

Genius and biographers : the fictionalization of Evariste Galois / Tony Rothman

Hermann Grassmann and the creation of linear algebra / Desmond Fearnley-Sander

The roots of commutative algebra in algebraic number theory / Israel Kleiner

Eisenstein's misunderstood geometric proof of the quadratic reciprocity theorem / Reinhard C. Laubenbacher and David J. Pengelley

Waring's problem / Charles Small

A history of the prime number theorem / L.J. Goldstein

A hundred years of prime numbers / Paul T. Bateman and Harold G. Diamond

The Indian mathematician Ramanujan / G.H. Hardy

Emmy Noether / Clark H. Kimberling

"A marvelous proof" / Fernando Q. Gouvêa

[pt. 4.] Surveys

The International Congress of Mathematicians / George Bruce Halsted

A popular account of some new fields of thought in mathematics / G.A. Miller

A half-century of mathematics / Hermann Weyl

Mathematics at the turn of the millennium / Philip A. Griffiths.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-61444-504-4

OCLC:

923220418