San Antonio College Library

A brilliant mathematician teeters on the brink of insanity as he searches for an elusive numerical code that will allow him to predict patterns in the stock market, while being pursued by an aggressive Wall Street firm set on financial domination and a Kaballah sect intent on unlocking the secrets behind their ancient holy texts.

This book teaches about the history of humankind's relationship with numbers, shapes, and patterns. This revised edition features up-to-date coverage of topics such as Fermat's Last Theorem and the Poincare conjecture, in addition to recent advances in areas such as finite group theory and computer-aided proofs. Includes information about the age of Plato and Aristotle, Poincare and Hilbert, the Pythagorean theorem, the golden mean. It explores the...

This reference on Irish mathematicians includes biographies on: Thomas Harriot (1560-1621); William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865); Robert Murphy (1806-1843); George Boole (1815-1864); George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903); George Salmon (1819-1904); John Casey (1820-1891); William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907); Henry John Stephen Smith (1826-83); Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912); Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845-1912); George Francis Fitzgerald (1851-1901);...

It is difficult to evaluate contemporary mathematicians without the benefit of a retrospective viewpoint, separated by several decades. This comprehensive single-volume A-to-Z reference covers both the past and present scientists who have significantly contributed to the field of mathematics. Including all of the central mathematicians, as well as other lesser-known persons in the field who made serious contributions, this inclusive reference covers...

A companion to Mathematical Apocrypha, this second volume of anecdotes, stories, quips, and ruminations about mathematics and mathematicians is sure to please. It differs from other books of its type in that many of the stories are from the twentieth century and many about currently living mathematicians. A number of the best stories come from the author's first-hand experience. There are stories the reader may wish to share with students and colleagues,...

With the story of David Hilbert perplexedly asking a colleague, "What is a Hilbert space?' being a typical example, this work presents anecdotes about the practice of mathematics that range in tone from humorous to celebratory. The anecdotes are arranged under sections devoted to great foolishness, great affrontery, great ideas, great failures, great pranks, and great people.

Includes works by : Euclid, Archimedes, Diophantus, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Pierre Simon De LaPlace, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, George Boole, Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, Karl Weierstrass, Richard Julius Wilhelm Dedekind, Georg Cantor, Henri Lebesgue, Kurt Godel, Alan Mathison Turing.

"Substantive biographical essays on 59 women from around the world who have made significant contributions to mathematics from antiquity to the present ... The emphasis is on contemporary mathematics."--Back cover.

Fascinating Mathematical People is a collection of informal interviews and memoirs of sixteen prominent members of the mathematical community of the twentieth century, many still active. The candid portraits collected here demonstrate that while these men and women vary widely in terms of their backgrounds, life stories, and worldviews, they all share a deep and abiding sense of wonder about mathematics. Featured here--in their own words--are major...

"The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann. Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. A child prodigy, he mastered calculus by the age of eight, and in high school...