Author: Sara N. Hottinger
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438460112
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
Where and how do we, as a culture, get our ideas about mathematics and about who can engage with mathematical knowledge? Sara N. Hottinger uses a cultural studies approach to address how our ideas about mathematics shape our individual and cultural relationship to the field. She considers four locations in which representations of mathematics contribute to our cultural understanding of mathematics: mathematics textbooks, the history of mathematics, portraits of mathematicians, and the field of ethnomathematics. Hottinger examines how these discourses shape mathematical subjectivity by limiting the way some groups—including women and people of color—are able to see themselves as practitioners of math. Inventing the Mathematician provides a blueprint for how to engage in a deconstructive project, revealing the limited and problematic nature of the normative construction of mathematical subjectivity.
Author: S. M. Ulam
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520910553
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The true story that inspired the 2020 film. The autobiography of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, tells a story rich with amazingly prophetic speculations and peppered with lively anecdotes. As a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1944 on, Ulam helped to precipitate some of the most dramatic changes of the postwar world. He was among the first to use and advocate computers for scientific research, originated ideas for the nuclear propulsion of space vehicles, and made fundamental contributions to many of today's most challenging mathematical projects. With his wide-ranging interests, Ulam never emphasized the importance of his contributions to the research that resulted in the hydrogen bomb. Now Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews reveal the true story of Ulam's pivotal role in the making of the "Super," in their historical introduction to this behind-the-scenes look at the minds and ideas that ushered in the nuclear age. An epilogue by Françoise Ulam and Jan Mycielski sheds new light on Ulam's character and mathematical originality.
Author: Amir D Aczel
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786732881
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Nicolas Bourbaki, whose mathematical publications began to appear in the late 1930s and continued to be published through most of the twentieth century, was a direct product as well as a major force behind an important revolution that took place in the early decades of the twentieth century that completely changed Western culture. Pure mathematics, the area of Bourbaki's work, seems on the surface to be an abstract field of human study with no direct connection with the real world. In reality, however, it is closely intertwined with the general culture that surrounds it. Major developments in mathematics have often followed important trends in popular culture; developments in mathematics have acted as harbingers of change in the surrounding human culture. The seeds of change, the beginnings of the revolution that swept the Western world in the early decades of the twentieth century -- both in mathematics and in other areas -- were sown late in the previous century. This is the story both of Bourbaki and the world that created him in that time. It is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke -- because Bourbaki, one of the foremost mathematicians of his day -- never existed.
Author: Michael Fitzgerald
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801896894
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
An intriguing look at the psychology and personality of mathematicians, with profiles of twenty prominent figures in the field. What makes mathematicians tick? How do their minds process formulas and concepts that, for most of the rest of the world’s population, remain mysterious and beyond comprehension? Is there a connection between mathematical creativity and mental illness? In The Mind of the Mathematician, internationally famous mathematician Ioan James and accomplished psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald look at the complex world of mathematics and the mind. Together they explore the behavior and personality traits that tend to fit the profile of a mathematician. They discuss mathematics and the arts, savants, gender and mathematical ability, and the impact of autism, personality disorders, and mood disorders. These topics, together with a succinct analysis of some of the great mathematical personalities of the past three centuries, combine to form an eclectic and fascinating blend of story and scientific inquiry. “The authors’ careful treatments are an especially welcome addition to a genre riddled with apocryphal anecdotes and shoddy scholarship.” —Nature
Author: Stuart Rojstaczer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698152204
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 383
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Book Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DEBUT FICTION For readers of This Is Where I Leave You and Everything Is Illuminated, “a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history and humor” (Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here) When the greatest female mathematician in history passes away, her son, Alexander “Sasha” Karnokovitch, just wants to mourn his mother in peace. But rumor has it the notoriously eccentric Polish émigré has solved one of the most difficult problems in all of mathematics, and has spitefully taken the solution to her grave. As a ragtag group of mathematicians from around the world descends upon Rachela’s shiva, determined to find the proof or solve it for themselves—even if it means prying up the floorboards for notes or desperately scrutinizing the mutterings of her African Grey parrot—Sasha must come to terms with his mother’s outsized influence on his life. Spanning decades and continents, from a crowded living room in Madison, Wisconsin, to the windswept beach on the Barents Sea where a young Rachela had her first mathematical breakthrough, The Mathematician’s Shiva is an unexpectedly moving and uproariously funny novel that captures humanity’s drive not just to survive, but to achieve the impossible.
Author: Saunders Mac Lane
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475747217
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
An array of general ideas useful in a wide variety of fields. Starting from the foundations, this book illuminates the concepts of category, functor, natural transformation, and duality. It then turns to adjoint functors, which provide a description of universal constructions, an analysis of the representations of functors by sets of morphisms, and a means of manipulating direct and inverse limits. These categorical concepts are extensively illustrated in the remaining chapters, which include many applications of the basic existence theorem for adjoint functors. The categories of algebraic systems are constructed from certain adjoint-like data and characterised by Beck's theorem. After considering a variety of applications, the book continues with the construction and exploitation of Kan extensions. This second edition includes a number of revisions and additions, including new chapters on topics of active interest: symmetric monoidal categories and braided monoidal categories, and the coherence theorems for them, as well as 2-categories and the higher dimensional categories which have recently come into prominence.
Author: Tendai Huchu
Publisher: amabooks Publishers
ISBN: 0797495002
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Three very different men struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love as they attempt to find a place for themselves in Britain. The Magistrate tries to create new memories and roots, fusing a wandering exploration of Edinburgh with music. The Maestro, a depressed, quixotic character, sinks out of the real world into the fantastic world of literature. The Mathematician, full of youth, follows a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, until their three universes collide. In this carefully crafted, multi-layered novel, Tendai Huchu, with his inimitable humour, reveals much about the Zimbabwe story as he draws the reader deep into the lives of the three main characters.
Author: David Wells
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
Explores the patterns, properties, and problems associated with numbers, looking at topics from basic arithmetic to algebraic equations, and includes over 100 brainteasers and their solutions.
Author: Jacob E. Goodman
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039116426
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Professor Claus Eisenstadt, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and a brilliant mathematician, disappears from Columbia University one day. After the police have given up the search, mathematics graduate student Judy Carter, compelled to solve puzzling problems—both in science and in real life—becomes intrigued with his sudden disappearance. As she tries to learn more about the whereabouts and welfare of the professor, Judy begins to suspect his unexpected absence may have something to do with his earlier days in Germany. Judy follows up on some of her theories about Professor Eisenstadt’s mysterious disappearance, but she is forced to give up without a solution. Years later, Judy has herself become a professor. While on sabbatical in Germany, she decides to look further into Eisenstadt’s disappearance, and begins to understand more about him, but is unable to find the answer to the puzzle of his vanishing. When Judy returns home to the US, she finds a thick envelope waiting for her, which contains an unusual request. She is surprised to find that it concerns Eisenstadt. Could this unexpected package be the link that helps Judy finally learn what happened to Claus and why he vanished? As the story unfolds, the novel travels between student days in prewar Germany and postwar America, which were impacted by prewar anti-Semitism and postwar guilt. The reader is allowed a glimpse into the work of scientific researchers and the interplay of that work with their personal lives.
Author: Martin Aigner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662223430
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
According to the great mathematician Paul Erdös, God maintains perfect mathematical proofs in The Book. This book presents the authors candidates for such "perfect proofs," those which contain brilliant ideas, clever connections, and wonderful observations, bringing new insight and surprising perspectives to problems from number theory, geometry, analysis, combinatorics, and graph theory. As a result, this book will be fun reading for anyone with an interest in mathematics.
