Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
by John Derbyshire
from Plume
Bernhard Riemann was an underdog of sorts, a malnourished son of a parson who grew up to be the author of one of mathematics' greatest problems. In Prime Obsession, John Derbyshire deals brilliantly with both Riemann's life and that problem: proof of the conjecture, "All non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one-half." Though the statement itself passes as nonsense to anyone but a mathematician, Derbyshire walks readers through the decades of reasoning that led to the Riemann Hypothesis in such a way as to clear it up perfectly. Riemann himself never proved the statement, and it remains unsolved to this day. Prime Obsession offers alternating chapters of step-by-step math and a history of 19th-century European intellectual life, letting readers take a breather between chunks of well-written information. Derbyshire's style is accessible but not dumbed-down, thorough but not heavy-handed. This is among the best popular treatments of an obscure mathematical idea, inviting readers to explore the theory without insisting on page after page of formulae.
In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who could prove the Riemann Hypothesis, but luminaries like David Hilbert, G.H. Hardy, Alan Turing, André Weil, and Freeman Dyson have all tried before. Will the Riemann Hypothesis ever be proved? "One day we shall know," writes Derbyshire, and he makes the effort seem very worthwhile. --Therese LittletonIn 1859, Bernhard Riemann, a little-known thirty-two year old mathematician, made a hypothesis while presenting a paper to the Berlin Academy titled “On the Number of Prime Numbers Less Than a Given Quantity.” Today, after 150 years of careful research and exhaustive study, the Riemann Hyphothesis remains unsolved, with a one-million-dollar prize earmarked for the first person to conquer it.
Alternating passages of extraordinarily lucid mathematical exposition with chapters of elegantly composed biography and history, Prime Obsession is a fascinating and fluent account of an epic mathematical mystery that continues to challenge and excite the world.
In August 1859 Bernhard Riemann, a little-known 32-year old mathematician, presented a paper to the Berlin Academy titled: "On the Number of Prime Numbers Less Than a Given Quantity." In the middle of that paper, Riemann made an incidental remark — a guess, a hypothesis. What he tossed out to the assembled mathematicians that day has proven to be almost cruelly compelling to countless scholars in the ensuing years. Today, after 150 years of careful research and exhaustive study, the question remains. Is the hypothesis true or false?
Riemann's basic inquiry, the primary topic of his paper, concerned a straightforward but nevertheless important matter of arithmetic — defining a precise formula to track and identify the occurrence of prime numbers. But it is that incidental remark — the Riemann Hypothesis — that is the truly astonishing legacy of his 1859 paper. Because Riemann was able to see beyond the pattern of the primes to discern traces of something mysterious and mathematically elegant shrouded in the shadows — subtle variations in the distribution of those prime numbers. Brilliant for its clarity, astounding for its potential consequences, the Hypothesis took on enormous importance in mathematics. Indeed, the successful solution to this puzzle would herald a revolution in prime number theory. Proving or disproving it became the greatest challenge of the age.
It has become clear that the Riemann Hypothesis, whose resolution seems to hang tantalizingly just beyond our grasp, holds the key to a variety of scientific and mathematical investigations. The making and breaking of modern codes, which depend on the properties of the prime numbers, have roots in the Hypothesis. In a series of extraordinary developments during the 1970s, it emerged that even the physics of the atomic nucleus is connected in ways not yet fully understood to this strange conundrum. Hunting down the solution to the Riemann Hypothesis has become an obsession for many — the veritable "great white whale" of mathematical research. Yet despite determined efforts by generations of mathematicians, the Riemann Hypothesis defies resolution.
Alternating passages of extraordinarily lucid mathematical exposition with chapters of elegantly composed biography and history, Prime Obsession is a fascinating and fluent account of an epic mathematical mystery that continues to challenge and excite the world. Posited a century and a half ago, the Riemann Hypothesis is an intellectual feast for the cognoscenti and the curious alike. Not just a story of numbers and calculations, Prime Obsession is the engrossing tale of a relentless hunt for an elusive proof — and those who have been consumed by it.
The Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers
by Alfred S. Posamentier
from Prometheus Books
The most ubiquitous, and perhaps the most intriguing, number pattern in mathematics is the Fibonacci sequence. In this simple pattern beginning with two ones, each succeeding number is the sum of the two numbers immediately preceding it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ad infinitum). Far from being just a curiosity, this sequence recurs in structures found throughout nature - from the arrangement of whorls on a pinecone to the branches of certain plant stems. All of which is astounding evidence for the deep mathematical basis of the natural world. With admirable clarity, mathematics educators Alfred Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann take us on a fascinating tour of the many ramifications of the Fibonacci numbers.The authors begin with a brief history of their distinguished Italian discoverer, who, among other accomplishments, was responsible for popularising the use of Arabic numerals in the West. Turning to botany, the authors demonstrate, through illustrative diagrams, the unbelievable connections between Fibonacci numbers and natural forms (pineapples, sunflowers, and daisies are just a few examples). In art, architecture, the stock market, and other areas of society and culture, they point out numerous examples of the Fibonacci sequence as well as its derivative, the 'golden ratio'.And of course in mathematics, as the authors amply demonstrate, there are almost boundless applications in probability, number theory, geometry, algebra, and Pascal's triangle, to name a few. Accessible and appealing to even the most math-phobic individual, this fun and enlightening book allows the reader to appreciate the elegance of mathematics and its amazing applications in both natural and cultural settings.
Algebraic Topology
by Allen Hatcher
from Cambridge University Press
In most major universities one of the three or four basic first-year graduate mathematics courses is algebraic topology. This introductory text is suitable for use in a course on the subject or for self-study, featuring broad coverage and a readable exposition, with many examples and exercises. The four main chapters present the basics: fundamental group and covering spaces, homology and cohomology, higher homotopy groups, and homotopy theory generally. The author emphasizes the geometric aspects of the subject, which helps students gain intuition. A unique feature is the inclusion of many optional topics not usually part of a first course due to time constraints: Bockstein and transfer homomorphisms, direct and inverse limits, H-spaces and Hopf algebras, the Brown representability theorem, the James reduced product, the Dold-Thom theorem, and Steenrod squares and powers.
In most mathematics departments at major universities one of the three or four basic first-year graduate courses is in the subject of algebraic topology. This introductory textbook in algebraic topology is suitable for use in a course or for self-study, featuring broad coverage of the subject and a readable exposition, with many examples and exercises. The four main chapters present the basic material of the subject: fundamental group and covering spaces, homology and cohomology, higher homotopy groups, and homotopy theory generally. A unique feature of the book is the inclusion of many optional topics for which elementary expositions are hard to find. Researchers and students alike will welcome this aspect of the book.
Commutative Algebra: with a View Toward Algebraic Geometry (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)
by David Eisenbud
from Springer
Commutative Algebra is best understood with knowledge of the geometric ideas that have played a great role in its formation, in short, with a view towards algebraic geometry. The author presents a comprehensive view of commutative algebra, from basics, such as localization and primary decomposition, through dimension theory, differentials, homological methods, free resolutions and duality, emphasizing the origins of the ideas and their connections with other parts of mathematics. Many exercises illustrate and sharpen the theory and extended exercises give the reader an active part in complementing the material presented in the text. One novel feature is a chapter devoted to a quick but thorough treatment of Grobner basis theory and the constructive methods in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry that flow from it. Applications of the theory and even suggestions for computer algebra projects are included. This book will appeal to readers from beginners to advanced students of commutative algebra or algebraic geometry. To help beginners, the essential ideals from algebraic geometry are treated from scratch. Appendices on homological algebra, multilinear algebra and several other useful topics help to make the book relatively self- contained. Novel results and presentations are scattered throughout the text.
Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint
by John Willard Milnor
from Princeton University Press
This elegant book by distinguished mathematician John Milnor, provides a clear and succinct introduction to one of the most important subjects in modern mathematics. Beginning with basic concepts such as diffeomorphisms and smooth manifolds, he goes on to examine tangent spaces, oriented manifolds, and vector fields. Key concepts such as homotopy, the index number of a map, and the Pontryagin construction are discussed. The author presents proofs of Sard's theorem and the Hopf theorem.
Advanced Euclidean Geometry (Dover Books on Mathematics)
by Roger A. Johnson
from Dover Publications
Algebraic Geometry (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)
by Robin Hartshorne
from Springer
Robin Hartshorne studied algebraic geometry with Oscar Zariski and David Mumford at Harvard, and with J.-P. Serre and A. Grothendieck in Paris. After receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1963, Hartshorne became a Junior Fellow at Harvard, then taught there for several years. In 1972 he moved to California where he is now Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of "Residues and Duality" (1966), "Foundations of Projective Geometry (1968), "Ample Subvarieties of Algebraic Varieties" (1970), and numerous research titles. His current research interest is the geometry of projective varieties and vector bundles. He has been a visiting professor at the College de France and at Kyoto University, where he gave lectures in French and in Japanese, respectively. Professor Hartshorne is married to Edie Churchill, educator and psychotherapist, and has two sons. He has travelled widely, speaks several foreign languages, and is an experienced mountain climber. He is also an accomplished amateur musician: he has played the flute for many years, and during his last visit to Kyoto he began studying the shakuhachi.
Lectures on Polytopes (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)
by Gunter M. Ziegler
from Springer
Based on a graduate course given at the Technische Universität, Berlin, these lectures present a wealth of material on the modern theory of convex polytopes. The clear and straightforward presentation features many illustrations, and provides complete proofs for most theorems. The material requires only linear algebra as a prerequisite, but takes the reader quickly from the basics to topics of recent research, including a number of unanswered questions. The lectures - introduce the basic facts about polytopes, with an emphasis on the methods that yield the results (Fourier-Motzkin elimination, Schlegel diagrams, shellability, Gale transforms, and oriented matroids) - discuss important examples and elegant constructions (cyclic and neighborly polytopes, zonotopes, Minkowski sums, permutahedra and associhedra, fiber polytopes, and the Lawrence construction) - show the excitement of current work in the field (Kalai's new diameter bounds, construction of non-rational polytopes, the Bohne-Dress tiling theorem, the upper-bound theorem), and nonextendable shellings) They should provide interesting and enjoyable reading for researchers as well as students.
The Map of My Life
by Goro Shimura
from Springer
The purpose of this book is manifold and includes more than just the author’s strict recollections. Shimura not only writes about himself, but also about the atmosphere of the time. As a result, the author includes many things that are completely ordinary and known to almost everyone of my generation. I do so because since they are so ordinary, they will never be written, and as a consequence, will be forgotten.
He has also included his opinions on various historical events and thoughts about human nature. In the latter part of the book, he writes about mathematics, and inevitably he uses technical terms. The reader who is not familiar with these terms should simply read through the passages in question without trying too hard to understand them. After all, this book is not about mathematics, but about how Shimura’s life is related to the development of mathematics. To understand that interaction, it is not necessary to have any special knowledge of mathematics.
Shimura spent most of his professional career at Princeton University. This book also delves into his childhood in Japan, his college years in Tokyo and Paris, as well as his numerous travels to conferences throughout the world. Shimura provides charming stories of many of the 20th century’s most important mathematicians.
Categories for the Working Mathematician (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)
by Saunders Mac Lane
from Springer
Categories for the Working Mathematician provides 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. The book 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 characterized 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 two new chapters on topics of active interest. One is on symmetric monoidal categories and braided monoidal categories and the coherence theorems for them. The second describes 2-categories and the higher dimensional categories which have recently come into prominence. The bibliography has also been expanded to cover some of the many other recent advances concerning categories.
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