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During the last few decades historians of science have shown a growing interest in science as a cultural activity and have regarded science more and more as part of the gene ral developments that have occurred in society. This trend has been less evident arnong historians of mathematics, who traditionally concentrate primarily on tracing the develop ment of mathematical knowledge itself. To some degree this restriction is connected with the special role of mathematics compared with the other sciences; mathematics typifies the most objective, most coercive type of knowledge, and there fore seems to be least affected by social influences. Nevertheless, biography, institutional history and his ...
This volume is, as may be readily apparent, the fruit of many years’ labor in archives and libraries, unearthing rare books, researching Nachlässe, and above all, systematic comparative analysis of fecund sources. The work not only demanded much time in preparation, but was also interrupted by other duties, such as time spent as a guest professor at universities abroad, which of course provided welcome opportunities to present and discuss the work, and in particular, the organizing of the 1994 International Graßmann Conference and the subsequent editing of its proceedings. If it is not possible to be precise about the amount of time spent on this work, it is possible to be precise about the date of its inception. In 1984, during research in the archive of the École polytechnique, my attention was drawn to the way in which the massive rupture that took place in 1811—precipitating the change back to the synthetic method and replacing the limit method by the method of the quantités infiniment petites—significantly altered the teaching of analysis at this first modern institution of higher education, an institution originally founded as a citadel of the analytic method.
This text presents the ideas of a particular group of mathematicians of the late 18th century known as “the German combinatorial school” and its influence. The book tackles several questions concerning the emergence and historical development of the German combinatorial analysis, which was the unfinished scientific research project of that group of mathematicians. The historical survey covers the three main episodes in the evolution of that research project: its theoretical antecedents (which go back to the innovative ideas on mathematical analysis of the late 17th century) and first formulation, its consolidation as a foundationalist project of mathematical analysis, and its dissolution at the beginning of the 19th century. In addition, the book analyzes the influence of the ideas of the combinatorial school on German mathematics throughout the 19th century.
This little book is conceived as a service to mathematicians attending the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. It presents a comprehensive, condensed overview of mathematical activity in Berlin, from Leibniz almost to the present day (without, however, including biographies of living mathematicians). Since many towering figures in mathematical history worked in Berlin, most of the chapters of this book are concise biographies. These are held together by a few survey articles presenting the overall development of entire periods of scientific life at Berlin. Overlaps between various chapters and differences in style between the chap ters were inevitable, but sometimes this provided opportunities to show different aspects of a single historical event - for instance, the Kronecker-Weierstrass con troversy. The book aims at readability rather than scholarly completeness. There are no footnotes, only references to the individual bibliographies of each chapter. Still, we do hope that the texts brought together here, and written by the various authors for this volume, constitute a solid introduction to the history of Berlin mathematics.
This work is the first explicit examination of the key role that mathematics has played in the development of theoretical physics and will undoubtedly challenge the more conventional accounts of its historical development. Although mathematics has long been regarded as the "language" of physics, the connections between these independent disciplines have been far more complex and intimate than previous narratives have shown. The author convincingly demonstrates that practices, methods, and language shaped the development of the field, and are a key to understanding the mergence of the modern academic discipline. Mathematicians and physicists, as well as historians of both disciplines, will find this provocative work of great interest.
Signals, Systems, Transforms, and Digital Signal Processing with MATLAB® has as its principal objective simplification without compromise of rigor. Graphics, called by the author, "the language of scientists and engineers", physical interpretation of subtle mathematical concepts, and a gradual transition from basic to more advanced topics are meant to be among the important contributions of this book. After illustrating the analysis of a function through a step-by-step addition of harmonics, the book deals with Fourier and Laplace transforms. It then covers discrete time signals and systems, the z-transform, continuous- and discrete-time filters, active and passive filters, lattice filters,...