e: The Story of a Number / Eli Maor.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Maor, Eli, author.

Series:

• Princeton science library.
• Princeton Science Library ; 41

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• e (The number).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (277 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

Core Textbook

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest mathematical background, this biography brings out the central importance of e to mathematics and illuminates a golden era in the age of science.

Contents:

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. John Napier, 1614
• 2 Recognition
• Computing with Logarithms
• 3 Financial Matters
• 4. To the Limit, If It Exists
• Some Curious Numbers Related to e
• 5. Forefathers of the Calculus
• 6. Prelude to Breakthrough
• Indivisibles at Work
• 7. Squaring the Hyperbola
• 8. The Birth of a New Science
• 9. The Great Controversy
• The Evolution of a Notation
• 10 ex: The Function That Equals Its Own Derivative
• The Parachutist
• Can Perceptions Be Quantified?
• 11 eθ Spira Mirabilis
• A Historic Meeting between J. S. Bach and Johann Bernoulli
• The Logarithmic Spiral in Art and Nature
• 12 (ex + e-x)/2: The Hanging Chain
• Remarkable Analogies
• Some Interesting Formulas Involving e
• 13 eix. "The Most Famous of All Formulas"
• A Curious Episode in the History of e
• 14 ex+iy: The Imaginary Becomes Real
• A Most Remarkable Discovery
• 15. But What Kind of Number Is It?
• Appendixes
• Appendix 1. Some Additional Remarks on Napier's Logarithms
• Appendix 2. The Existence of lim (1+1/n)n as n∞
• Appendix 3. A Heuristic Derivation of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus
• Appendix 4. The Inverse Relation between lim (bh-1)/h = 1 and lim (1+h)1/h as h0
• Appendix 5. An Alternative Definition of the Logarithmic Function
• Appendix 6. Two Properties of the Logarithmic Spiral
• Appendix 7. Interpretation of the Parameter Hyperbolic Functions
• Appendix 8. e to One Hundred Decimal Places
• Bibliography
• Index

Notes:

• Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

• 9786613379870
• 9780691168487
• 0691168482
• 9781283379878
• 1283379872
• 9781400832347
• 1400832349

OCLC:

979910801