The German mathematician Karl Weierstrass (1815-97) is generally considered to be the father of modern analysis. His clear eye for what was important is demonstrated by the publication, late in life, of his polynomial approximation theorem; suitably generalised as the Stone-Weierstrass theorem, it became a central tool for twentieth-century analysis. Furthermore, the Weierstrass nowhere-differentiable function is the seed from which springs the entire modern theory of mathematical finance. The best students in Europe came to Berlin to attend his lectures, and his rigorous style still dominates the first analysis course at any university. His seven-volume collected works in the original German contain not only published treatises but also records of many of his famous lecture courses. Edited by Rudolf Rothe (1873-1942), Volume 6 was published in 1915.

What makes mathematics so special? Whether you have anxious memories of the subject from school, or solve quadratic equations for fun, David Acheson's book will make you look at mathematics afresh. Following on from his previous bestsellers, The Calculus Story and The Wonder Book of Geometry, here Acheson highlights the power of algebra, combining it with arithmetic and geometry to capture the spirit of mathematics. This short book encompasses an astonishing array of ideas and concepts, from number tricks and magic squares to infinite series and imaginary numbers. Acheson's enthusiasm is infectious, and, as ever, a sense of quirkiness and fun pervades the book. But it also seeks to crystallize what is special about mathematics: the delight of discovery; the importance of proof; and the joy of contemplating an elegant solution. Using only the simplest of materials, it conjures up the depth and the magic of the subject.

Mohammed ben Musa (c.780 c.850) was a Persian mathematician and astronomer. The word 'algebra' derives from his Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, which introduced modern algebraic methods. First published in 1831, this translation from Arabic into English was prepared by the German orientalist Friedrich August Rosen (1805 37). The key algebraic methods introduced are reduction, completion and balancing. To reduce an equation is to change an expression to a simpler form; completion is to remove a negative quantity from one side of the equation and add it to the other; and balancing is to cancel like terms on opposite sides of the equation. An account is also given of solving polynomial equations up to the second degree. Rosen's introduction and notes accompany the translation, which remains relevant in the history of mathematics.

An important mathematician and astronomer in medieval India, Bhascara Acharya (1114 85) wrote treatises on arithmetic, algebra, geometry and astronomy. He is also believed to have been head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, which was the leading centre of mathematical sciences in India. Forming part of his Sanskrit magnum opus Siddh nta Shiromani, the present work is his treatise on arithmetic, including coverage of geometry. It was first published in English in 1816 after being translated by the East India Company surgeon John Taylor (d.1821). Used as a textbook in India for centuries, it provides the basic mathematics needed for astronomy. Topics covered include arithmetical terms, plane geometry, solid geometry and indeterminate equations. Of enduring interest in the history of mathematics, this work also contains Bhascara's pictorial proof of Pythagoras' theorem.

An important mathematician and astronomer in medieval India, Bhascara Acharya (1114 85) wrote treatises on arithmetic, algebra, geometry and astronomy. He is also believed to have been head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, which was the leading centre of mathematical sciences in India. Forming part of his Sanskrit magnum opus Siddh nta Shiromani, the present work is his treatise on algebra. It was first published in English in 1813 after being translated from a Persian text by the East India Company civil servant Edward Strachey (1774 1832). The topics covered include operations involving positive and negative numbers, surds and zero, as well as algebraic, simultaneous and indeterminate equations. Strachey also appends useful notes made by the orientalist Samuel Davis (1760 1819). Of enduring interest in the history of mathematics, this was notably the first work to acknowledge that a positive number has two square roots.

This book contains new translations and a new analysis of the procedure texts of Babylonian mathematical astronomy, the earliest known form of mathematical astronomy of the ancient world. The translations are based on a modern approach incorporating recent insights from Assyriology and translation science.

The work contains updated and expanded interpretations of the astronomical algorithms and investigations of previously ignored linguistic, mathematical and other aspects of the procedure texts.

Special attention is paid to issues of mathematical representation and over 100 photos of cuneiform tablets dating from 350-50 BCE are presented.

In 2-3 years, theauthor intends to continue his study of Babylonian mathematicalastronomy with a new publication which will contain new editions and reconstructions of approx. 250 tabular texts and a new philological, astronomical and mathematical analysis of these texts. Tabular texts are end products of Babylonian math astronomy, computed with algorithms that are formulated in the present volume, Procedure Texts."

From the Preface: "There are three volumes. The first one contains a curriculum vitae, a "Breve Analyse des Travaux" and a Iist of publications, including books and seminars. In addition the volume contains all papers of H. Cartan on analytic functions published before 1939. The other papers on analytic functions, e.g. those on Stein manifolds and coherent sheaves, make up the second volume. The third volume contains, with a few exceptions, all further papers of H. Cartan; among them is a reproduction of exposes 2 to 11 of his 1954/55 Seminar on Eilenberg-MacLane algebras. Each volume is arranged in chronological order. The reader should be aware that these volumes do not fully reflect H. Cartan's work, a large part of which is also contained in his fifteen ENS-Seminars (1948-1964) and in his book "Homological Algebra" with S. Eilenberg...Still, we trust that mathematicians throughout the world will welcome the availability of the "Oeuvres" of a mathematician whose writing and teaching has had such an influence on our generation."

This second volume of a collection of papers offers new perspectives and challenges in the study of logic. It is presented in honor of the fiftieth birthday of Jean-Yves Beziau. The papers touch upon a wide range of topics including paraconsistent logic, quantum logic, geometry of oppositions, categorical logic, computational logic, fundamental logic notions (identity, rule, quantification) and history of logic (Leibniz, Peirce, Hilbert). The volume gathers personal recollections about Jean-Yves Beziau and an autobiography, followed by 25 papers written by internationally distinguished logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists, linguists and philosophers, including Irving Anellis, Dov Gabbay, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Istvan Nemeti, Henri Prade. These essays will be of interest to all students and researchers interested in the nature and future of logic.

From the Preface: "There are three volumes. The first one contains a curriculum vitae, a "Breve Analyse des Travaux" and a Iist of publications, including books and seminars. In addition the volume contains all papers of H. Cartan on analytic functions published before 1939. The other papers on analytic functions, e.g. those on Stein manifolds and coherent sheaves, make up the second volume. The third volume contains, with a few exceptions, all further papers of H. Cartan; among them is a reproduction of exposes 2 to 11 of his 1954/55 Seminar on Eilenberg-MacLane algebras. Each volume is arranged in chronological order. The reader should be aware that these volumes do not fully reflect H. Cartan's work, a large part of which is also contained in his fifteen ENS-Seminars (1948-1964) and in his book "Homological Algebra" with S. Eilenberg...Still, we trust that mathematicians throughout the world will welcome the availability of the "Oeuvres" of a mathematician whose writing and teaching has had such an influence on our generation."

The focus of this book is the fundamental influence of the cyphering tradition on mathematics education in North American colleges, schools, and apprenticeship training classes between 1607 and 1861. It is the first book on the history of North American mathematics education to be written from that perspective. The principal data source is a set of 207 handwritten cyphering books that have never previously been subjected to careful historical analysis.

During his short life Oswald Teichmuller wrote 34 papers, all reproduced in this volume. From the Preface: "Teichmuller's most influential paper was called "Extremale quasikonforme Abbildungen und quadratische Differentiale" (No. 20 in this collection). At the time of its appearance several special cases of extremal problems for quasiconformal mappings had already been solved, and Teichmuller was able to draw on a substantial fund of experience. Nevertheless, it was a remarkable feat to extract the common features of all the known examples and formulate a conjecture, now known as Teichmuller's theorem, which in an unexpected way connects the holomorphic second order differentials on a Riemann surface with the extremal quasiconformal mappings of that surface. The paper of 1939 contains a uniqueness proof, which is essentially still the only known proof, but not yet a rigorous existence proof. This did not prevent Teichmuller from laying the foundation of what has become known as the theory of Teichmuller spaces, a theory that has mushroomed to an extent that could not then have been foreseen. At the same time Teichmuller's work led to a deeper understanding of the fundamental role played by quasiconformal mappings in all of geometric function theory, and it foreshadowed the subsequent development of the theory of quasiconformal mappings in several dimensions...the whole theory of analytic functions of one complex variable has been greatly enriched by the inclusion of quasiconformal mappings, much of it based on Teichmuller's seminal ideas."

Seki was a Japanese mathematician in the seventeenth century known for his outstanding achievements, including the elimination theory of systems of algebraic equations, which preceded the works of Etienne Bezout and Leonhard Euler by 80 years. Seki was a contemporary of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, although there was apparently no direct interaction between them. The Mathematical Society of Japan and the History of Mathematics Society of Japan hosted the International Conference on History of Mathematics in Commemoration of the 300th Posthumous Anniversary of Seki in 2008. This book is the official record of the conference and includes supplements of collated texts of Seki's original writings with notes in English on these texts. Hikosaburo Komatsu (Professor emeritus, The University of Tokyo), one of the editors, is known for partial differential equations and hyperfunction theory, and for his study on the history of Japanese mathematics. He served as the President of the International Congress of Mathematicians Kyoto 1990.

The 16th-Century intellectual Robert Recorde is chiefly remembered for introducing the equals sign into algebra, yet the greater significance and broader scope of his work is often overlooked.

"Robert Recorde: Tudor Polymath, Expositor and Practitioner of Computation" presents an authoritative and in-depth analysis of the man, his achievements and his historical importance. This scholarly yet accessible work examines the latest evidence on all aspects of Recorde s life, throwing new light on a character deserving of greater recognition.

Topics and features: presents a concise chronology of Recorde s life; examines his published works; "The Grounde of Artes," "The Pathway to Knowledge," "The Castle of Knowledge," and "The Whetstone of Witte"; describes Recorde s professional activities in the minting of money and the mining of silver, as well as his dispute with William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; investigates Recorde s work as a physician, his linguistic and antiquarian interests, and his religious beliefs; discusses the influence of Recorde s publisher, Reyner Wolfe, in his life; reviews his legacy to 17th-Century science, and to modern computer science and mathematics.

This fascinating insight into a much under-appreciated figure is a must-read for researchers interested in the history of computer science and mathematics, and for scholars of renaissance studies, as well as for the general reader."

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.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a mathematician brilliant beyond comparison who inspired many great mathematicians. There is extensive literature available on the work of Ramanujan. But what is missing in the literature is an analysis that would place his mathematics in context and interpret it in terms of modern developments. The 12 lectures by Hardy, delivered in 1936, served this purpose at the time they were given. This book presents Ramanujan's essential mathematical contributions and gives an informal account of some of the major developments that emanated from his work in the 20th and 21st centuries. It contends that his work still has an impact on many different fields of mathematical research. This book examines some of these themes in the landscape of 21st-century mathematics. These essays, based on the lectures given by the authors focus on a subset of Ramanujan's significant papers and show how these papers shaped the course of modern mathematics.

This is the first English translation of Thomas Harriot's seminal Artis Analyticae Praxis, first published in Latin in 1631. It has recently become clear that Harriot's editor substantially rearranged the work, and omitted sections beyond his comprehension. Commentary included with this translation relates to corresponding pages in the manuscript papers, enabling exploration of Harriot's novel and advanced mathematics. This publication provides the basis for a reassessment of the development of algebra.

Among the group of physics honors students huddled in 1957 on a Colorado mountain watching Sputnik bisect the heavens, one young scientist was destined, three short years later, to become a key player in America s own top-secret spy satellite program. One of our era s most prolific mathematicians, Karl Gustafson was given just two weeks to write the first US spy satellite s software. The project would fundamentally alter America s Cold War strategy, and this autobiographical account of a remarkable academic life spent in the top flight tells this fascinating inside story for the first time.

Gustafson takes you from his early pioneering work in computing, through fascinating encounters with Nobel laureates and Fields medalists, to his current observations on mathematics, science and life. He tells of brushes with death, being struck by lightning, and the beautiful women who have been a part of his journey."

The nineteenth century saw the paradoxes and obscurities of eighteenth-century calculus gradually replaced by the exact theorems and statements of rigorous analysis. It became clear that all analysis could be deduced from the properties of the real numbers. But what are the real numbers and why do they have the properties we claim they do? In this charming and influential book, Richard Dedekind (1831-1916), Professor at the Technische Hochschule in Braunschweig, showed how to resolve this problem starting from elementary ideas. His method of constructing the reals from the rationals (the Dedekind cut) remains central to this day and was generalised by Conway in his construction of the 'surreal numbers'. This reissue of Dedekind's 1888 classic is of the 'second, unaltered' 1893 edition.

Niels Henrik Abel (1802-29) was one of the most prominent mathematicians in the first half of the nineteenth century. His pioneering work in diverse areas such as algebra, analysis, geometry and mechanics has made the adjective 'abelian' a commonplace in mathematical writing. These collected works, first published in two volumes in 1881 after careful preparation by the mathematicians Ludwig Sylow (1832-1918) and Sophus Lie (1842-99), contain some of the pillars of mathematical history. Volume 1 includes perhaps the most famous of Abel's results, namely his proof of the 'impossibility theorem', which states that the general fifth-degree polynomial is unsolvable by algebraic means. Also included in this volume is Abel's 'Paris memoir', which contains his many fundamental results on transcendental functions - in particular on elliptic integrals, elliptic functions, and what are known today as abelian integrals.

Niels Henrik Abel (1802-29) was one of the most prominent mathematicians in the first half of the nineteenth century. His pioneering work in diverse areas such as algebra, analysis, geometry and mechanics has made the adjective 'abelian' a commonplace in mathematical writing. These collected works, first published in two volumes in 1881 after careful preparation by the mathematicians Ludwig Sylow (1832-1918) and Sophus Lie (1842-99), contain some of the pillars of mathematical history. Volume 2 contains additional articles on elliptic functions and infinite series. It also includes extracts from Abel's letters, as well as detailed notes and commentary by Sylow and Lie on Abel's pioneering work.

Asymptotic methods belong to the, perhaps, most romantic area of modern mathematics. They are widely known and have been used in me chanics, physics and other exact sciences for many, many decades. But more than this, asymptotic ideas are found in all branches of human knowledge, indeed in all areas of life. In this broader context they have not and perhaps cannot be fully formalized. However, they are mar velous, they leave room for fantasy, guesses and intuition; they bring us very near to the border of the realm of art. Many books have been written and published about asymptotic meth ods. Most of them presume a mathematically sophisticated reader. The authors here attempt to describe asymptotic methods on a more accessi ble level, hoping to address a wider range of readers. They have avoided the extreme of banishing formulae entirely, as done in some popular science books that attempt to describe mathematical methods with no mathematics. This is impossible (and not wise). Rather, the authors have tried to keep the mathematics at a moderate level. At the same time, using simple examples, they think they have been able to illustrate all the key ideas of asymptotic methods and approaches, to depict in de tail the results of their application to various branches of knowledg- from astronomy, mechanics, and physics to biology, psychology and art. The book is supplemented by several appendices, one of which con tains the profound ideas of R. G.

This publication was made possible through a bequest from my beloved late wife. United together in this present collection are those works by the author which have not previously appeared in book form. The following are excepted: Vorlesungen uber Differential und Integralrechnung (Lectures on Differential and Integral Calculus) Vols 1-3, Birkhauser Verlag, Basel (1965-1968); Aufgabensammlung zur Infinitesimalrechnung (Exercises in Infinitesimal Calculus) Vols 1, 2a, 2b, and 3, Birkhauser Verlag, Basel (1967-1977); two issues from Memorial des Sciences on Conformal Mapping (written together with C. Gattegno), Gauthier-Villars, Paris (1949); Solution of Equations in Euc1idean and Banach Spaces, Academic Press, New York (1973); and Stu- dien uber den Schottkyschen Satz (Studies on Schottky's Theorem), Wepf & Co., Basel (1931). Where corrections have had to be implemented in the text of certain papers, references to these are made at the conc1usion of each paper. In the few instances where this system does not, for technical reasons, seem appropriate, an asterisk in the page margin indicates wherever a correction is necessary and this is then given at the end of the paper. (There is one exception: the correc- tions to the paper on page 561 are presented on page 722. The works are published in 6 volumes and are arranged under 16 topic headings. Within each heading, the papers are ordered chronologically according to the date of original publication.

Leon Battista Alberti was an outstanding polymath of the fifteenth century, alongside Piero della Francesca and before Leonardo da Vinci. While his contributions to architecture and the visual arts are well known and available in good English editions, and much of his literary and social writings are also available in English, his mathematical works are not well represented in readily available, accessible English editions have remained accessible only to specialists. The four treatises included here - Ludi matematici, De Componendis Cifris, Elementi di pittura and De lunularum quadratura - are extremely valuable in rounding out the portrait of this multitalented thinker. The treatises are presented in modern English translations, with commentary that is intended to make evident the depths of Alberti's knowledge as well as address the treatises' mathematical, historical and cultural context, their classical Greek roots, and their relationship to later works by Renaissance thinkers.

James Joseph Sylvester (1814-97) was an English mathematician who made key contributions to numerous areas of his field and was also of primary importance in the development of American mathematics, both as inaugural Professor of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University and founder of the American Journal of Mathematics. Originally published in 1904, this book forms the first in four volumes of Sylvester's mathematical papers, covering the period from 1837 to 1853. Together these volumes provide a comprehensive resource that will be of value to anyone with an interest in Sylvester's theories and the history of mathematics.

The Origins of Husserl's Totalizing Act At noon on Monday, October 24th, 1887, Dr. Edmund G. Husserl defended the dissertation that would qualify him as a university lecturer at Halle. Entitled "On the Concept of Number," it was written under Carl Stumpf who, like Husserl, had been a student of Franz Brentano. In this, his first published philosophical work, Husserl sought to secure the foundations of mathematics by deriving its most fundamental concepts from psychical acts. In the same year, Heinrich Hertz published an article entitled, "Con cerning an Influence of Ultraviolet Light on the Electrical Discharge." The article detailed his discovery of a new "relation between two entirely different forces," those of light and electricity. Hermann von Helmholtz, whose theory guided Hertz's initial research, called it the "most important physical discovery of the century," and Hertz became an immediate sensation. He lectured on his discovery in 1889 before a general session of the German Association meeting in Heidelberg. In this lecture that, as he wrote beforehand to Emil Cohn, he was deter mined should not be "entirely unintelligible to the laity," Hertz explained that light ether and electro-magnetic forces were interdependent. He went on to tell his audience that they need not expect their senses to grant them access to these phenomena. Indeed, he said, the latter are not only insusceptible of sense perception, but are false from the standpoint of the senses."