Joseph Liouville 1809–1882

Joseph Liouville 1809–1882 PDF Author: Jesper Lützen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461209897
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 893

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Book Description
This scientific biography of the mathematician Joseph Liouville is divided into two parts. The first part is a chronological account of Liouville's career including a description of the institutions he worked in, his relations with his teachers, colleagues and students, and the historical context of his works. It portrays the French scientific community in a period when Germany and England had surpassed France as the leading nations in mathematics and physics. The second part of the book gives a detailed analysis of Liouville's major contributions to mathematics and mechanics. The gradual development of Liouville's ideas, as reflected in his publications and notebooks, are related to the works of his predecessors and his contemporaries as well as to later developments in the field. On the basis of Liouville's unpublished notes the book reconstructs Liouville's hitherto unknown theories of stability of rotating masses of fluid, potential theory, Galois theory and electrodynamics. It also incorporates valuable added information from Liouville's notes regarding his works on differentiation of arbitrary order, integration in finite terms, Sturm-Liouville theory, transcendental numbers, doubly periodic functions, geometry and mechanics.

Joseph Liouville 1809–1882

Joseph Liouville 1809–1882 PDF Author: Jesper Lützen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461209897
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 893

Get Book Here

Book Description
This scientific biography of the mathematician Joseph Liouville is divided into two parts. The first part is a chronological account of Liouville's career including a description of the institutions he worked in, his relations with his teachers, colleagues and students, and the historical context of his works. It portrays the French scientific community in a period when Germany and England had surpassed France as the leading nations in mathematics and physics. The second part of the book gives a detailed analysis of Liouville's major contributions to mathematics and mechanics. The gradual development of Liouville's ideas, as reflected in his publications and notebooks, are related to the works of his predecessors and his contemporaries as well as to later developments in the field. On the basis of Liouville's unpublished notes the book reconstructs Liouville's hitherto unknown theories of stability of rotating masses of fluid, potential theory, Galois theory and electrodynamics. It also incorporates valuable added information from Liouville's notes regarding his works on differentiation of arbitrary order, integration in finite terms, Sturm-Liouville theory, transcendental numbers, doubly periodic functions, geometry and mechanics.

The Problem of the Earth's Shape from Newton to Clairaut

The Problem of the Earth's Shape from Newton to Clairaut PDF Author: John L. Greenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521385411
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description
This book investigates, through the problem of the earth's shape, part of the development of post-Newtonian mechanics by the Parisian scientific community during the first half of the eighteenth century. In the Principia Newton first raised the question of the earth's shape. John Greenberg shows how continental scholars outside France influenced efforts in Paris to solve the problem, and he also demonstrates that Parisian scholars, including Bouguer and Fontaine, did work that Alexis-Claude Clairaut used in developing his mature theory of the earth's shape. The evolution of Parisian mechanics proved not to be the replacement of a Cartesian paradigm by a Newtonian one, a replacement that might be expected from Thomas Kuhn's formulations about scientific revolutions, but a complex process instead involving many areas of research and contributions of different kinds from the entire scientific world. Greenberg both explores the myriad of technical problems that underlie the historical development of part of post-Newtonian mechanics, which have only been rarely analyzed by Western scholars, and embeds his technical discussion in a framework that involves social and institutional history politics, and biography. Instead of focusing exclusively on the historiographical problem, Greenberg shows as well that international scientific communication was as much a vital part of the scientific progress of individual nations during the first half of the eighteenth century as it is today.

Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research Community, 1800-1945

Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research Community, 1800-1945 PDF Author: Karen Hunger Parshall
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821821245
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Although today's mathematical research community takes its international character very much for granted, this ``global nature'' is relatively recent, having evolved over a period of roughly 150 years-from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. During this time, the practice of mathematics changed from being centered on a collection of disparate national communities to being characterized by an international group of scholars for whom thegoal of mathematical research and cooperation transcended national boundaries. Yet, the development of an international community was far from smooth and involved obstacles such as war, political upheaval, and national rivalries. Until now, this evolution has been largely overlooked by historians andmathematicians alike. This book addresses the issue by bringing together essays by twenty experts in the history of mathematics who have investigated the genesis of today's international mathematical community. This includes not only developments within component national mathematical communities, such as the growth of societies and journals, but also more wide-ranging political, philosophical, linguistic, and pedagogical issues. The resulting volume is essential reading for anyone interestedin the history of modern mathematics. It will be of interest to mathematicians, historians of mathematics, and historians of science in general.

The Investigation of Difficult Things

The Investigation of Difficult Things PDF Author: Peter Michael Harman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521892667
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
A collection of twenty original essays on the history of science and mathematics. The topics covered embrace the main themes of Whiteside's scholarly work, emphasising Newtonian topics: mathematics and astronomy to Newton; Newton's manuscripts; Newton's Principia; Newton and eighteenth-century mathematics and physics; after Newton: optics and dynamics. The focus of these themes gives the volume considerable coherence. This volume of essays makes available important original work on Newton and the history of the exact sciences. This volume has been published in honour of D. T. Whiteside, famous for his edition of The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton.

Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840

Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840 PDF Author: Ivor Grattan-Guinness
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9783764322397
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description


A History of Modern Planetary Physics

A History of Modern Planetary Physics PDF Author: Stephen G. Brush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521441711
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Nebulous Earth follows the development of the nineteenth-century's most popular explanation for the origin of the solar system, Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis.

Henri Poincaré

Henri Poincaré PDF Author: Jeremy Gray
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691242038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
A comprehensive look at the mathematics, physics, and philosophy of Henri Poincaré Henri 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.

Mr Hopkins' Men

Mr Hopkins' Men PDF Author: A.D.D. Craik
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 184628791X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
A few years ago, in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, I came across a remarkable but then little-known album of pencil and watercolour portraits. The artist of most (perhaps all) was Thomas Charles Wageman. Created during 1829–1852, these portraits are of pupils of the famous mat- matical tutor William Hopkins. Though I knew much about several of the subjects, the names of others were then unknown to me. I was prompted to discover more about them all, and gradually this interest evolved into the present book. The project has expanded naturally to describe the Cambridge educational milieu of the time, the work of William Hopkins, and the later achievements of his pupils and their contemporaries. As I have taught applied mathematics in a British university for forty years, during a time of rapid change, the struggles to implement and to resist reform in mid-nineteenth-century Cambridge struck a chord of recognition. So, too, did debates about academic standards of honours degrees. And my own experiences, as a graduate of a Scottish university who proceeded to C- bridge for postgraduate work, gave me a particular interest in those Scots and Irish students who did much the same more than a hundred years earlier. As a mathematician, I sometimes felt frustrated at having to suppress virtually all of the ? ne mathematics associated with this period: but to have included such technical material would have made this a very different book.

Convolution in French Mathematics, 1800-1840: The data

Convolution in French Mathematics, 1800-1840: The data PDF Author: I. Grattan-Guinness
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mathematical physics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description


The Dialectic Relation Between Physics and Mathematics in the XIXth Century

The Dialectic Relation Between Physics and Mathematics in the XIXth Century PDF Author: Evelyne Barbin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400753802
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The aim of this book is to analyse historical problems related to the use of mathematics in physics as well as to the use of physics in mathematics and to investigate Mathematical Physics as precisely the new discipline which is concerned with this dialectical link itself. So the main question is: When and why did the tension between mathematics and physics, explicitly practised at least since Galileo, evolve into such a new scientific theory? The authors explain the various ways in which this science allowed an advanced mathematical modelling in physics on the one hand, and the invention of new mathematical ideas on the other hand. Of course this problem is related to the links between institutions, universities, schools for engineers, and industries, and so it has social implications as well. The link by which physical ideas had influenced the world of mathematics was not new in the 19th century, but it came to a kind of maturity at that time. Recently, much historical research has been done into mathematics and physics and their relation in this period. The purpose of the Symposium and this book is to gather and re-evaluate the current thinking on this subject. It brings together contributions from leading experts in the field, and gives much-needed insight in the subject of mathematical physics from a historical point of view.