This book offers an alternative to current philosophy of mathematics: heuristic philosophy of mathematics. In accordance with the heuristic approach, the philosophy of mathematics must concern itself with the making of mathematics and in particular with mathematical discovery. In the past century, mainstream philosophy of mathematics has claimed that the philosophy of mathematics cannot concern itself with the making of mathematics but only with finished mathematics, namely mathematics as presented in published works. On this basis, mainstream philosophy of mathematics has maintained that mathematics is theorem proving by the axiomatic method. This view has turned out to be untenable because of Goedel's incompleteness theorems, which have shown that the view that mathematics is theorem proving by the axiomatic method does not account for a large number of basic features of mathematics. By using the heuristic approach, this book argues that mathematics is not theorem proving by the axiomatic method, but is rather problem solving by the analytic method. The author argues that this view can account for the main items of the mathematical process, those being: mathematical objects, demonstrations, definitions, diagrams, notations, explanations, applicability, beauty, and the role of mathematical knowledge.

This book contains a compendium of 25 papers published since the 1970s dealing with pi and associated topics of mathematics and computer science. The collection begins with a Foreword by Bruce Berndt. Each contribution is preceded by a brief summary of its content as well as a short key word list indicating how the content relates to others in the collection. The volume includes articles on actual computations of pi, articles on mathematical questions related to pi (e.g., "Is pi normal?"), articles presenting new and often amazing techniques for computing digits of pi (e.g., the "BBP" algorithm for pi, which permits one to compute an arbitrary binary digit of pi without needing to compute any of the digits that came before), papers presenting important fundamental mathematical results relating to pi, and papers presenting new, high-tech techniques for analyzing pi (i.e., new graphical techniques that permit one to visually see if pi and other numbers are "normal"). This volume is a companion to Pi: A Source Book whose third edition released in 2004. The present collection begins with 2 papers from 1976, published by Eugene Salamin and Richard Brent, which describe "quadratically convergent" algorithms for pi and other basic mathematical functions, derived from some mathematical work of Gauss. Bailey and Borwein hold that these two papers constitute the beginning of the modern era of computational mathematics. This time period (1970s) also corresponds with the introduction of high-performance computer systems (supercomputers), which since that time have increased relentlessly in power, by approximately a factor of 100,000,000, advancing roughly at the same rate as Moore's Law of semiconductor technology. This book may be of interest to a wide range of mathematical readers; some articles cover more advanced research questions suitable for active researchers in the field, but several are highly accessible to undergraduate mathematics students.

David Singmaster believes in the presentation and teaching of mathematics as recreation. When the Rubik's Cube took off in 1978, based on thinly disguised mathematics, he became seriously interested in mathematical puzzles which would provide mental stimulation for students and professional mathematicians. He has not only published the standard mathematical solution for the Rubik's cube still in use today, but he has also become the de facto scribe and noted chronicler of the recreational mathematics puzzles themselves.Dr Singmaster is also an ongoing lecturer of recreational mathematics around the globe, a noted mechanical puzzle collector, owner of thousands of books related to recreational mathematical puzzles and the 'go to' source for the history of individual mathematical puzzles.This set of two books provides readers with an adventure into previously unknown origins of ancient puzzles, which could be traced back to their Medieval, Chinese, Arabic and Indian sources. The puzzles are fully described, many with illustrations, adding interest to their history and relevance to contemporary mathematical concepts. These are musings of a respected historian of recreational mathematics.

This volume contains seventeen papers that were presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/La Societe Canadienne d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Mathematiques, held in Washington, D.C. In addition to showcasing rigorously reviewed modern scholarship on an interesting variety of general topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics, this meeting also honored the memories of Jacqueline (Jackie) Stedall and Ivor Grattan-Guinness; celebrated the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America; and considered the importance of mathematical communities in a special session. These themes and many others are explored in these collected papers, which cover subjects such as New evidence that the Latin translation of Euclid's Elements was based on the Arabic version attributed to al-Hajjaj Work done on the arc rampant in the seventeenth century The history of numerical methods for finding roots of nonlinear equations An original play featuring a dialogue between George Boole and Augustus De Morgan that explores the relationship between them Key issues in the digital preservation of mathematical material for future generations A look at the first twenty-five years of The American Mathematical Monthly in the context of the evolving American mathematical community The growth of Math Circles and the unique ways they are being implemented in the United States Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers will be accessible to not only mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also anyone with a general interest in mathematics.

This book collects the papers of the conference held in Berlin, Germany, 27-29 August 2012, on 'Space, Geometry and the Imagination from Antiquity to the Modern Age'. The conference was a joint effort by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) and the Centro die Ricerca Matematica Ennio De Giorgi (Pisa).

This book outlines the scientific career of Arto Salomaa, a pioneer in theoretical computer science and mathematics. The author first interviewed the subject and his family and collaborators, and he then researched this fascinating biography of an intellectual who was key in the development of these fields. Early chapters progress chronologically from Academician Salomaa's origins, childhood, and education to his professional successes in science, teaching, and publishing. His most impactful direct research efforts have been in the areas of automata and formal languages. Beyond that he has influenced many more scientists and professionals through collaborations, teaching, and books on topics such as biocomputing and cryptography. The author offers insights into Finnish history, culture, and academia, while historians of computer science will appreciate the vignettes describing some of the people who have shaped the field from the 1950s to today. The author and his subject return throughout to underlying themes such as the importance of family and the value of longstanding collegial relationships, while the work and achievements are leavened with humor and references to interests such as music, sport, and the sauna.

This book presents a history of mathematic between 1607 and 1865 in that part of mainland North America which is north of Mexico but excludes the present-day Canada and Alaska. Unlike most other histories of mathematics now available, the emphasis is on the gradual emergence of "mathematics for all" programs and associated changes in thinking which drove this emergence. The book takes account of changing ideas about intended, implemented and attained mathematics curricula for learners of all ages. It also pays attention to the mathematics itself, and to how it was taught and learned.

This unique volume summarizes with a historical perspective several of the major scientific achievements of Ludwig Faddeev, with a foreword by Nobel Laureate C N Yang. The volume that spans over fifty years of Faddeev's career begins where he started his own scientific research, in the subject of scattering theory and the three-body problem. It then continues to describe Faddeev's contributions to automorphic functions, followed by an extensive account of his many fundamental contributions to quantum field theory including his original article on ghosts with Popov. Faddeev's contributions to soliton theory and integrable models are then described, followed by a survey of his work on quantum groups. The final scientific section is devoted to Faddeev's contemporary research including articles on his long-term interest in constructing knotted solitons and understanding confinement. The volume concludes with his personal view on science and mathematical physics in particular.

Nonstandard Analysis enhances mathematical reasoning by introducing new ways of expression and deduction. Distinguishing between standard and nonstandard mathematical objects, its inventor, the eminent mathematician Abraham Robinson, settled in 1961 the centuries-old problem of how to use infinitesimals correctly in analysis. Having also worked as an engineer, he saw not only that his method greatly simplified mathematically proving and teaching, but also served as a powerful tool in modelling, analyzing and solving problems in the applied sciences, among others by effective rescaling and by infinitesimal discretizations.

This book reflects the progress made in the forty years since the appearance of Robinson s revolutionary book Nonstandard Analysis: in the foundations of mathematics and logic, number theory, statistics and probability, in ordinary, partial and stochastic differential equations and in education. The contributions are clear and essentially self-contained."

The book is aimed at people working in number theory or at least interested in this part of mathematics. It presents the development of the theory of algebraic numbers up to the year 1950 and contains a rather complete bibliography of that period. The reader will get information about results obtained before 1950. It is hoped that this may be helpful in preventing rediscoveries of old results, and might also inspire the reader to look at the work done earlier, which may hide some ideas which could be applied in contemporary research.

Prime numbers are beautiful, mysterious, and beguiling mathematical objects. The mathematician Bernhard Riemann made a celebrated conjecture about primes in 1859, the so-called Riemann hypothesis, which remains one of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics. Through the deep insights of the authors, this book introduces primes and explains the Riemann hypothesis. Students with a minimal mathematical background and scholars alike will enjoy this comprehensive discussion of primes. The first part of the book will inspire the curiosity of a general reader with an accessible explanation of the key ideas. The exposition of these ideas is generously illuminated by computational graphics that exhibit the key concepts and phenomena in enticing detail. Readers with more mathematical experience will then go deeper into the structure of primes and see how the Riemann hypothesis relates to Fourier analysis using the vocabulary of spectra. Readers with a strong mathematical background will be able to connect these ideas to historical formulations of the Riemann hypothesis.

This book looks at classic puzzles from the perspective of their structures and what they tell us about the brain. It uses the work on the neuroscience of mathematics from Dehaene, Butterworth, Lakoff, Nunez, and many others as a lens to understand the ways in which puzzles reflect imaginative processes blended with rational ones. The book is not about recreational or puzzle-based mathematics in and of itself but rather about what the classic puzzles tell us about the mathematical imagination and its impact on the discipline. It delves into the history of classic math puzzles, deconstructing their raison d'etre and describing their psychological features, so that their nature can be fleshed out in order to help understand the mathematical mind. This volume is the first monographic treatment of the psychological nature of puzzles in mathematics. With its user-friendly technical level of discussion, it is of interest to both general readers and those who engage in the disciplines of mathematics, psychology, neuroscience, and/or anthropology. It is also ideal as a textbook source for courses in recreational mathematics, or as reference material in introductory college math courses.

Kuo-Tsai Chen (1923-1987) is best known to the mathematics community for his work on iterated integrals and power series connections in conjunction with his research on the cohomology of loop spaces. His work is intimately related to the theory of minimal models as developed by Dennis Sullivan, whose own work was in part inspired by the research of Chen. An outstanding and original mathematician, Chen's work falls naturally into three periods: his early work on group theory and links in the three sphere; his subsequent work on formal differential equations, which gradually developed into his most powerful and important work; and his work on iterated integrals and homotopy theory, which occupied him for the last twenty years of his life. The goal of Chen's iterated integrals program, which is a de Rham theory for path spaces, was to study the interaction of topology and analysis through path integration. The present volume is a comprehensive collection of Chen's mathematical publications preceded by an article, "The Life and Work of Kuo-Tsai Chen," placing his work and research interests into their proper context and demonstrating the power and scope of his influence.

Zero indicates the absence of a quantity or a magnitude. It is so deeply rooted in our psyche today that nobody will possibly ask "What is zero?" From the beginning of the very creation of life, the feeling of lack of something or the vision of emptiness/void has been embedded by the creator in all living beings. While recognizing different things as well as the absence of one of these things are easy, it is not so easy to fathom the complete nothingness viz. the universal void. Although we have a very good understanding of nothingness or, equivalently, a zero today, our forefathers had devoted countless hours and arrived at the representation and integration of zero and its compatibility not only with all non-zero numbers but also with all conceivable environments only after many painstaking centuries. Zero can be viewed/perceived in two distinct forms: (i) as a number in our mundane affairs and (ii) as the horrific void or Absolute Reality in the spiritual plane/the ultimate state of mind. Presented are the reasons why zero is a landmark discovery and why it has the potential to conjure up in an intense thinker the dreadful nothingness unlike those of other numbers such as 1, 2, and 3. Described are the representation of zero and its history including its deeper understanding via calculus, its occurrences and various roles in different countries as well as in sciences/engineering along with a stress on the Indian zero that is accepted as the time-invariant unique absolute zero. This is followed by the significant distinction between mathematics and computational mathematics and the concerned differences between the unique absolute zero and non-unique relative numerical zeros and their impact and importance in computations on a digital computer.

This book gathers the proceedings of the conference "Cultures of Mathematics and Logic," held in Guangzhou, China. The event was the third in a series of interdisciplinary, international conferences emphasizing the cultural components of philosophy of mathematics and logic. It brought together researchers from many disciplines whose work sheds new light on the diversity of mathematical and logical cultures and practices. In this context, the cultural diversity can be diachronical (different cultures in different historical periods), geographical (different cultures in different regions), or sociological in nature.

One of the greatest mathematicians in the world, Michael Atiyah has earned numerous honors, including a Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize. While the focus of his work has been in the areas of algebraic geometry and topology, he has also participated in research with theoretical physicists. For the first time, these volumes bring together Atiyah's collected papers--both monographs and collaborative works-- including those dealing with mathematical education and current topics of research such as K-theory and gauge theory. The volumes are organized thematically. They will be of great interest to research mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and graduate students in these areas.

Professor Atiyah is one of the greatest living mathematicians and is well known throughout the mathematical world. He is a recipient of the Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and is still at the peak of his career. His huge number of published papers, focusing on the areas of algebraic geometry and topology, have here been collected into six volumes, divided thematically for easy reference by individuals interested in a particular subject. From 1977 onwards his interest moved in the direction of gauge theories and the interaction between geometry and physics.

This brilliantly illustrated tale of reason, insanity, love and truth recounts the story of Bertrand Russell's life. Raised by his paternal grandparents, young Russell was never told the whereabouts of his parents. Driven by a desire for knowledge of his own history, he attempted to force the world to yield to his yearnings: for truth, clarity and resolve. As he grew older, and increasingly sophisticated as a philosopher and mathematician, Russell strove to create an objective language with which to describe the world - one free of the biases and slippages of the written word. At the same time, he began courting his first wife, teasing her with riddles and leaning on her during the darker days, when his quest was bogged down by paradoxes, frustrations and the ghosts of his family's secrets. Ultimately, he found considerable success - but his career was stalled when he was outmatched by an intellectual rival: his young, strident, brilliantly original student, Ludwig Wittgenstein. An insightful and complexly layered narrative, Logicomix reveals both Russell's inner struggle and the quest for the foundations of logic. Narration by an older, wiser Russell, as well as asides from the author himself, make sense of the story's heady and powerful ideas. At its heart, Logicomix is a story about the conflict between pure reason and the persistent flaws of reality, a narrative populated by great and august thinkers, young lovers, ghosts and insanity.

This engaging book places Leonardo da Vinci's scientific achievements within the wider context of the rapid development that occurred during the Renaissance. It demonstrates how his contributions were not in fact born of isolated genius, but rather part of a rich period of collective advancement in science and technology, which began at least 50 years prior to his birth. Readers will discover a very special moment in history, when creativity and imagination were changing the future-shaping our present. They will be amazed to discover how many technological inventions had already been conceived or even designed by the engineers and inventors who preceded Leonardo, such as Francesco di Giorgio and Taccola, the so-called Siena engineers. This engaging volume features a wealth of illustrations from a variety of original sources, such as manuscripts and codices, enabling the reader to see and judge for him or herself the influence that other Renaissance engineers and inventors had on Leonardo.

This book presents Goedel's incompleteness theorems and the other limitative results which are most significant for the philosophy of mathematics. Results are stated in the form most relevant for use in the philosophy of mathematics. An appendix considers their implications for Hilbert's Program for the foundations of mathematics. The text is self-contained, all notions being explained in full detail, but of course previous exposure to the very first rudiments of mathematical logic will help.

This unique two-part discussion of foxglove--the herb from which digitalis is derived--features a facsimile of William Withering's classic "An Account of Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses," complete with explanatory notes interpreting this eighteenth century text for the modern reader. The second part of the book, written by J.K. Aronson, co-author of the Oxford Textbook of Clinical Pharmacology, includes an introduction to the botany and pharmacology of foxgloves, their therapeutic uses before Withering, a short biography of Withering, an account of 18th century medical practices, and finally a review of the uses of digitalis in modern medicine.

The book presents the history of ICMI trough a prosopographical approach. In other words, it pays a lot of attention to the actors of the International movement. The portraits of the members of the ICMI Central Committees (1908-1936) and ICMI Executive Committees (1952-2008), and other eminent figures in ICMI history, who have passed away in the first 100 years of its life, are the guiding thread of the volume. Each portrait includes: * Biographical information * An outline of the various contributions made by the individual in question to the study of problems pertaining to mathematics teaching/education * Primary bibliography * Secondary with particular attention to the publications concerning the teaching of mathematics * Images: photos, book frontispieces, relevant manuscripts The authors of the portraits (30 altogether) are researchers in the history of mathematics, mathematics, and mathematics education. The focus on the officer's role within ICMI and on his/her contributions to mathematics education, make the portraits different from usual biographies. In particular, since most officers were active mathematicians, the portraits shed light on aspects of their lesser-known activity. Connecting chapters place the action of these figures in the historical context and in the different phases of ICMI history.

This book offers a historical explanation of important philosophical problems in logic and mathematics, which have been neglected by the official history of modern logic. It offers extensive information on Gottlob Frege's logic, discussing which aspects of his logic can be considered truly innovative in its revolution against the Aristotelian logic. It presents the work of Hilbert and his associates and followers with the aim of understanding the revolutionary change in the axiomatic method. Moreover, it offers useful tools to understand Tarski's and Goedel's work, explaining why the problems they discussed are still unsolved. Finally, the book reports on some of the most influential positions in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, i.e., Maddy's mathematical naturalism and Shapiro's mathematical structuralism. Last but not least, the book introduces Biancani's Aristotelian philosophy of mathematics as this is considered important to understand current philosophical issue in the applications of mathematics. One of the main purposes of the book is to stimulate readers to reconsider the Aristotelian position, which disappeared almost completely from the scene in logic and mathematics in the early twentieth century.

This book explores the most significant computational methods and the history of their development. It begins with the earliest mathematical / numerical achievements made by the Babylonians and the Greeks, followed by the period beginning in the 16th century. For several centuries the main scientific challenge concerned the mechanics of planetary dynamics, and the book describes the basic numerical methods of that time. In turn, at the end of the Second World War scientific computing took a giant step forward with the advent of electronic computers, which greatly accelerated the development of numerical methods. As a result, scientific computing became established as a third scientific method in addition to the two traditional branches: theory and experimentation. The book traces numerical methods' journey back to their origins and to the people who invented them, while also briefly examining the development of electronic computers over the years. Featuring 163 references and more than 100 figures, many of them portraits or photos of key historical figures, the book provides a unique historical perspective on the general field of scientific computing - making it a valuable resource for all students and professionals interested in the history of numerical analysis and computing, and for a broader readership alike.

This Handbook explores the history of mathematics under a series of themes which raise new questions about what mathematics has been and what it has meant to practice it. It addresses questions of who creates mathematics, who uses it, and how. A broader understanding of mathematical practitioners naturally leads to a new appreciation of what counts as a historical source. Material and oral evidence is drawn upon as well as an unusual array of textual sources. Further, the ways in which people have chosen to express themselves are as historically meaningful as the contents of the mathematics they have produced. Mathematics is not a fixed and unchanging entity. New questions, contexts, and applications all influence what counts as productive ways of thinking. Because the history of mathematics should interact constructively with other ways of studying the past, the contributors to this book come from a diverse range of intellectual backgrounds in anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy, and literature, as well as history of mathematics more traditionally understood.
The thirty-six self-contained, multifaceted chapters, each written by a specialist, are arranged under three main headings: 'Geographies and Cultures', 'Peoples and Practices', and 'Interactions and Interpretations'. Together they deal with the mathematics of 5000 years, but without privileging the past three centuries, and an impressive range of periods and places with many points of cross-reference between chapters. The key mathematical cultures of North America, Europe, the Middle East, India, and China are all represented here as well as areas which are not often treated in mainstream history of mathematics, such as Russia, the Balkans, Vietnam, and South America. This Handbook will be a vital reference for graduates and researchers in mathematics, historians of science, and general historians.