Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
1,539
result(s) for
"Mathematicians History."
Sort by:
The Britannica guide to geometry
More than a study of shapes and angles, geometry reflects an amalgamation of discoveries over time. This book not only provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of geometric shapes, axioms, and formulas, it presents the field's brilliant minds-from Euclid to Wendelin Werner and many in between-whose works reflect a progression of mathematical thought throughout the centuries and have helped produce the various branches of geometry as they are known today. Detailed diagrams illustrate various concepts and help make geometry accessible to all.-From the Publisher.
Book
When Computers Were Human
Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term \"computer\" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, \"I wish I'd used my calculus,\" hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.
eBook
Mathematicians : an outer view of the inner world
Photographs accompanied by autobiographical text written by each mathematician.
Book
Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany
The emigration of mathematicians from Europe during the Nazi era signaled an irrevocable and important historical shift for the international mathematics world.Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germanyis the first thoroughly documented account of this exodus. In this greatly expanded translation of the 1998 German edition, Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze describes the flight of more than 140 mathematicians, their reasons for leaving, the political and economic issues involved, the reception of these emigrants by various countries, and the emigrants' continuing contributions to mathematics. The influx of these brilliant thinkers to other nations profoundly reconfigured the mathematics world and vaulted the United States into a new leadership role in mathematics research.
Based on archival sources that have never been examined before, the book discusses the preeminent emigrant mathematicians of the period, including Emmy Noether, John von Neumann, Hermann Weyl, and many others. The author explores the mechanisms of the expulsion of mathematicians from Germany, the emigrants' acculturation to their new host countries, and the fates of those mathematicians forced to stay behind. The book reveals the alienation and solidarity of the emigrants, and investigates the global development of mathematics as a consequence of their radical migration.
An in-depth yet accessible look at mathematics both as a scientific enterprise and human endeavor,Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germanyprovides a vivid picture of a critical chapter in the history of international science.
eBook
The secret lives of numbers
From building rockets to the handheld technology that governs our day-to-day lives, we are all in debt to the mathematical geniuses of the past. But the history of mathematics is warped; it looks like a sixteenth-century map that enlarges Europe at the expense of Africa, Asia and the Americas. This book introduces readers to a new group of mathematical boundary-smashers, those who have been erased by history because of their race, gender or nationality. Kitagawa and Revell bring to vivid life the stories and struggles of mathematicians from every continent: from the brilliant Arabic scholars of the ninth century 'House of Wisdom'; to the pioneering African-American mathematicians of the twentieth century; the first female mathematics professor (from Russia); and the 'lady computers' around the world who revolutionised our knowledge of the night sky.
Book
Mathematicians under the Nazis
Contrary to popular belief--and despite the expulsion, emigration, or death of many German mathematicians--substantial mathematics was produced in Germany during 1933-1945. In this landmark social history of the mathematics community in Nazi Germany, Sanford Segal examines how the Nazi years affected the personal and academic lives of those German mathematicians who continued to work in Germany.
The effects of the Nazi regime on the lives of mathematicians ranged from limitations on foreign contact to power struggles that rattled entire institutions, from changed work patterns to military draft, deportation, and death. Based on extensive archival research, Mathematicians under the Nazis shows how these mathematicians, variously motivated, reacted to the period's intense political pressures. It details the consequences of their actions on their colleagues and on the practice and organs of German mathematics, including its curricula, institutions, and journals. Throughout, Segal's focus is on the biographies of individuals, including mathematicians who resisted the injection of ideology into their profession, some who worked in concentration camps, and others (such as Ludwig Bieberbach) who used the \"Aryanization\" of their profession to further their own agendas. Some of the figures are no longer well known; others still tower over the field. All lived lives complicated by Nazi power.
Presenting a wealth of previously unavailable information, this book is a large contribution to the history of mathematics--as well as a unique view of what it was like to live and work in Nazi Germany.
eBook
Differential Equations, Mathematical Physics, and Applications
This is the second of two volumes dedicated to the centennial of the distinguished mathematician Selim Grigorievich Krein. The companion volume is Contemporary Mathematics, Volume 733.Krein was a major contributor to functional analysis, operator theory, partial differential equations, fluid dynamics, and other areas, and the author of several influential monographs in these areas. He was a prolific teacher, graduating 83 Ph.D. students. Krein also created and ran, for many years, the annual Voronezh Winter Mathematical Schools, which significantly influenced mathematical life in the former Soviet Union.The articles contained in this volume are written by prominent mathematicians, former students and colleagues of Selim Krein, as well as lecturers and participants of Voronezh Winter Schools. They are devoted to a variety of contemporary problems in ordinary and partial differential equations, fluid dynamics, and various applications.
eBook
Masters of mathematics : the problems they solved, why these are important, and what you should know about them
\"The original title for this work was \"Mathematical Literacy, What Is It and Why You Need it\". The current title reflects that there can be no real learning in any subject, unless questions of who, what, when, where, why and how are raised in the minds of the learners. The book is not a mathematical text, and there are no assigned exercises or exams. It is written for reasonably intelligent and curious individuals, both those who value mathematics, aware of its many important applications and others who have been inappropriately exposed to mathematics, leading to indifference to the subject, fear and even loathing. These feelings are all consequences of meaningless presentations, drill, rote learning and being lost as the purpose of what is being studied. Mathematics education needs a radical reform. There is more than one way to accomplish this. Here the author presents his approach of wrapping mathematical ideas in a story. To learn one first must develop an interest in a problem and the curiosity to find how masters of mathematics have solved them. What is necessary to be mathematically literate? It's not about solving algebraic equations or even making a geometric proof. These are valuable skills but not evidence of literacy. We often seek answers but learning to ask pertinent questions is the road to mathematical literacy. Here is the good news: new mathematical ideas have a way of finding applications. This is known as \"the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Case of Academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin
The Soviet school, one of the glories of twentieth-century mathematics, faced a serious crisis in the summer of 1936. It was suffering from internal strains due to generational conflicts between the young talents and the old establishment. At the same time, Soviet leaders (including Stalin himself) were bent on \"Sovietizing\" all of science in the USSR by requiring scholars to publish their works in Russian in the Soviet Union, ending the nearly universal practice of publishing in the West. A campaign to \"Sovietize\" mathematics in the USSR was launched with an attack on Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin, the leader of the Soviet school of mathematics, in Pravda. Luzin was fortunate in that only a few of the most ardent ideologues wanted to destroy him utterly. As a result, Luzin, though humiliated and frightened, was allowed to make a statement of public repentance and then let off with a relatively mild reprimand. A major factor in his narrow escape was the very abstractness of his research area (descriptive set theory), which was difficult to incorporate into a propaganda campaign aimed at the broader public. The present book contains the transcripts of five meetings of the Academy of Sciences commission charged with investigating the accusations against Luzin, meetings held in July of 1936. Ancillary material from the Soviet press of the time is included to place these meetings in context. It is wonderful to have this book available in English translation. \"The Case of Academician Luzin\" is a highly significant event in the history of Soviet mathematics; with its presentation of original sources, together with ample commentary, this book will now convey the full import of this event to a new readership. -Christopher Hollings, Oxford University, author of \"Mathematics across the Iron Curtain\" The translation into English of \"The Case of Academician
Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin\" is an important contribution toward the understanding of the fate of a great mathematician in Stalin's time. We learn here the details of how he was judged in a political trial. I would like to immodestly suggest that reading this source together with Jean-Michel Kantor's and my recent book \"Naming Infinity\" will clarify an episode in both the history of mathematics and of the Soviet Union that has long mystified observers. -Loren Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science, MIT and Harvard.
eBook