This book presents, in his own words, the life of Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972), noted Polish mathematician of Jewish background, educator, and mathematical popularizer. A student of Hilbert, a pioneer of the foundations of probability and game theory, and a contributor to the development of functional analysis, he was one of those instrumental to the extraordinary flowering of Polish mathematics before and after World War I. In particular, it was he who "discovered" the great Stefan Banach. Exhibiting his great integrity and wit, Steinhaus's personal story of the turbulent times he survived - including two world wars and life postwar under the Soviet heel - cannot but be of consuming interest. His account of the years spent evading Nazi terror is especially moving. The steadfast honesty and natural dignity he maintained while pursuing a life of demanding scientific and intellectual enquiry in the face of encroaching calamity and chaos show him to be truly a mathematician for all seasons. The present work will be of great interest not only to mathematicians wanting to learn some of the details of the mathematical blossoming that occurred in Poland in the first half of the 20th century, but also to anyone wishing to read a first-hand account of the history of those unquiet times in Europe - and indeed world-wide - by someone of uncommon intelligence and forthrightness situated near an eye of the storm.

This treasure of popular science by the Russian biophysicist Mikhail V. Volkenstein is at last, more than twenty years after its appearance in Russian, available in English translation.

As its title Entropy and Information suggests, the book deals with the thermodynamical concept of entropy and its interpretation in terms of information theory. The author shows how entropy is not to be considered a mere shadow of the central physical concept of energy, but more appropriately as a leading player in all of the major natural processes: physical, chemical, biological, evolutionary, and even cultural.

The theory of entropy is thoroughly developed from its beginnings in the foundational work of Sadi Carnot and Clausius in the context of heat engines, including expositions of much of the necessary physics and mathematics, and illustrations from everyday life of the importance of entropy.

The author then turns to Boltzmann's epoch-making formula relating the entropy of a system directly to the degree of disorder of the system, and to statistical physics as created by Boltzmann and Maxwell---and here again the necessary elements of probability and statistics are expounded. It is shown, in particular, that the temperature of an object is essentially just a measure of the mean square speed of its molecules.

Fluctuations" in a system are introduced and used to explain why the sky is blue, and how, perhaps, the universe came to be so ordered. Whether statistical physics reduces ultimately to pure mechanics, as Laplace's demon" would have it, is also discussed.

The final three chapters concentrate on open systems, that is, systems which exchange energy or matter with their surroundings---first linear systems close to equilibrium, and then non-linear systems far from equilibrium. Here entropy, as it figures in the theory of such systems developed by Prigogine and others, affords explanations of the mechanism of division of cells, the process of aging in organisms, and periodic chemical reactions, among other phenomena.

Finally, information theory is developed---again from first principles---and the entropy of a system characterized as absence of information about the system. In the final chapter, perhaps the piece de resistance of the work, the author examines the thermodynamics of living organisms in the context of biological evolution. Here the value of biological information" is discussed, linked to the concepts of complexity and irreplaceability. The chapter culminates in a fascinating discussion of the significance of these concepts, all centered on entropy, for human culture, with many references to particular writers and artists.

The book is recommended reading for all interested in physics, information theory, chemistry, biology, as well as literature and art."

This book is an investigation of the mathematical and philosophical factors underlying the discovery of the concept of noneuclidean geometries, and the subsequent extension of the concept of space. Chapters one through five are devoted to the evolution of the concept of space, leading up to chapter six which describes the discovery of noneuclidean geometry, and the corresponding broadening of the concept of space. The author goes on to discuss concepts such as multidimensional spaces and curvature, and transformation groups. The book ends with a chapter describing the applications of nonassociative algebras to geometry.

New Edition - New in Paperback - This is the second revised edition of the first volume of the outstanding collection of historical studies of mathematics in the nineteenth century compiled in three volumes by A. N. Kolmogorov and A. P. Yushkevich. This second edition was carefully revised by Abe Shenitzer, York University, Ontario, Canada. The historical period covered in this book extends from the early nineteenth century up to the end of the 1930s, as neither 1801 nor 1900 are, in themselves, turning points in the history of mathematics, although each date is notable fo a remarkable event: the first for the publication of Gauss' "Disquisitiones arithmeticae," the second for Hilbert's "Mathematical Problems." Beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century mathematics underwent a revolution as crucial and profound in its consequences for the general world outlook as the mathematical revolution in the beginning of the modern era. The main changes included a new statement of the problem of the existence of mathematical objects, particulary in the calculus, and soon thereafter the formation of non-standard structures in geometry, arithmetic and algebra. The primary objective of the work has been to treat the evolution of mathematics in the nineteenth century as a whole; the discussion is concentrated on the essential concepts, methods, and algorithms.

This book presents, in his own words, the life of Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972), noted Polish mathematician of Jewish background, educator, and mathematical popularizer. A student of Hilbert, a pioneer of the foundations of probability and game theory, and a contributor to the development of functional analysis, he was one of those instrumental to the extraordinary flowering of Polish mathematics before and after World War I. In particular, it was he who "discovered" the great Stefan Banach. Exhibiting his great integrity and wit, Steinhaus's personal story of the turbulent times he survived - including two world wars and life postwar under the Soviet heel - cannot but be of consuming interest. His recounting of the fearful years spent evading Nazi terror is especially moving. The steadfast honesty and natural dignity he maintained while pursuing a life of demanding scientific and intellectual enquiry in the face of encroaching calamity and chaos show him to be truly a mathematician for all seasons. The present work will be of great interest not only to mathematicians wanting to learn some of the details of the mathematical blossoming that occurred in Poland in the first half of the 20th century, but also to anyone wishing to read a first-hand account of the history of those unquiet times in Europe - and indeed world-wide - by someone of uncommon intelligence and forthrightness situated near an eye of the storm.

This book presents, in his own words, the life of Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972), noted Polish mathematician of Jewish background, educator, and mathematical popularizer. A student of Hilbert, a pioneer of the foundations of probability and game theory, and a contributor to the development of functional analysis, he was one of those instrumental to the extraordinary flowering of Polish mathematics before and after World War I. In particular, it was he who "discovered" the great Stefan Banach. Exhibiting his great integrity and wit, Steinhaus's personal story of the turbulent times he survived - including two world wars and life postwar under the Soviet heel - cannot but be of consuming interest. His account of the years spent evading Nazi terror is especially moving. The steadfast honesty and natural dignity he maintained while pursuing a life of demanding scientific and intellectual enquiry in the face of encroaching calamity and chaos show him to be truly a mathematician for all seasons. The present work will be of great interest not only to mathematicians wanting to learn some of the details of the mathematical blossoming that occurred in Poland in the first half of the 20th century, but also to anyone wishing to read a first-hand account of the history of those unquiet times in Europe - and indeed world-wide - by someone of uncommon intelligence and forthrightness situated near an eye of the storm.

This book presents, in his own words, the life of Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972), noted Polish mathematician of Jewish background, educator, and mathematical popularizer. A student of Hilbert, a pioneer of the foundations of probability and game theory, and a contributor to the development of functional analysis, he was one of those instrumental to the extraordinary flowering of Polish mathematics before and after World War I. In particular, it was he who "discovered" the great Stefan Banach. Exhibiting his great integrity and wit, Steinhaus's personal story of the turbulent times he survived - including two world wars and life postwar under the Soviet heel - cannot but be of consuming interest. His recounting of the fearful years spent evading Nazi terror is especially moving. The steadfast honesty and natural dignity he maintained while pursuing a life of demanding scientific and intellectual enquiry in the face of encroaching calamity and chaos show him to be truly a mathematician for all seasons. The present work will be of great interest not only to mathematicians wanting to learn some of the details of the mathematical blossoming that occurred in Poland in the first half of the 20th century, but also to anyone wishing to read a first-hand account of the history of those unquiet times in Europe - and indeed world-wide - by someone of uncommon intelligence and forthrightness situated near an eye of the storm.

The Russian edition of this book appeared in 1976 on the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the historic day of February 23, 1826, when LobaeevskiI delivered his famous lecture on his discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. The importance of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry goes far beyond the limits of geometry itself. It is safe to say that it was a turning point in the history of all mathematics. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century marked the transition from "mathematics of constant magnitudes" to "mathematics of variable magnitudes. " During the seventies of the last century there occurred another scientific revolution. By that time mathematicians had become familiar with the ideas of non-Euclidean geometry and the algebraic ideas of group and field (all of which appeared at about the same time), and the (later) ideas of set theory. This gave rise to many geometries in addition to the Euclidean geometry previously regarded as the only conceivable possibility, to the arithmetics and algebras of many groups and fields in addition to the arith metic and algebra of real and complex numbers, and, finally, to new mathe matical systems, i. e. , sets furnished with various structures having no classical analogues. Thus in the 1870's there began a new mathematical era usually called, until the middle of the twentieth century, the era of modern mathe matics.

This book deals with various systems of "numbers" that can be constructed by adding "imaginary units" to the real numbers. The complex numbers are a classical example of such a system. One of the most important properties of the complex numbers is given by the identity (1) Izz'l = Izl.Iz'I. It says, roughly, that the absolute value of a product is equal to the product of the absolute values of the factors. If we put z = al + a2i, z' = b+ bi, 1 2 then we can rewrite (1) as The last identity states that "the product of a sum of two squares by a sum of two squares is a sum of two squares. " It is natural to ask if there are similar identities with more than two squares, and how all of them can be described. Already Euler had given an example of an identity with four squares. Later an identity with eight squares was found. But a complete solution of the problem was obtained only at the end of the 19th century. It is substantially true that every identity with n squares is linked to formula (1), except that z and z' no longer denote complex numbers but more general "numbers" where i, j, . . ., I are imaginary units. One of the main themes of this book is the establishing of the connection between identities with n squares and formula (1)."

The name of Bernard Riemann is well known to mathematicians and physicists around the world. His name is indelibly stamped on the literature of mathematics and physics. This remarkable work, rich in insight and scholarship, is addressed to mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers interested in mathematics. It seeks to draw those readers closer to the underlying ideas of Riemann 's work and to the development of them in their historical context. This illuminating English-language version of the original German edition will be an important contribution to the literature of the history of mathematics.

This informative survey chronicles the process of abstraction that ultimately led to the axiomatic formulation of the abstract notion of group. Hans Wussing, former Director of the Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine and Science at Leipzig University, contradicts the conventional thinking that the roots of the abstract notion of group lie strictly in the theory of algebraic equations. Wussing declares their presence in the geometry and number theory of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
This survey ranges from the works of Lagrange via Cauchy, Abel, and Galois to those of Serret and Camille Jordan. It then turns to Cayley, to Felix Klein's Erlangen Program, and to Sophus Lie, concluding with a sketch of the state of group theory circa 1920, when the axiom systems of Webber were formalized and investigated in their own right.
"It is a pleasure to turn to Wussing's book, a sound presentation of history," observed the "Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, " noting that "Wussing always gives enough detail to let us understand what each author was doing, and the book could almost serve as a sampler of nineteenth-century algebra. The bibliography is extremely good, and the prose is sometimes pleasantly epigrammatic."