Visions of Infinity: The Great Mathematical Problems - Hardcover

Stewart, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465022405 ISBN 13: 9780465022403

Publisher: Basic Books, 2013

Synopsis

It is one of the wonders of mathematics that, for every problem mathematicians solve, another awaits to perplex and galvanize them. Some of these problems are new, while others have puzzled and bewitched thinkers across the ages. Such challenges offer a tantalizing glimpse of the field's unlimited potential, and keep mathematicians looking toward the horizons of intellectual possibility.

In Visions of Infinity, celebrated mathematician Ian Stewart provides a fascinating overview of the most formidable problems mathematicians have vanquished, and those that vex them still. He explains why these problems exist, what drives mathematicians to solve them, and why their efforts matter in the context of science as a whole. The three-century effort to prove Fermat's last theorem first posited in 1630, and finally solved by Andrew Wiles in 1995 led to the creation of algebraic number theory and complex analysis. The Poincaré conjecture, which was cracked in 2002 by the eccentric genius Grigori Perelman, has become fundamental to mathematicians' understanding of three-dimensional shapes. But while mathematicians have made enormous advances in recent years, some problems continue to baffle us. Indeed, the Riemann hypothesis, which Stewart refers to as the Holy Grail of pure mathematics,” and the P/NP problem, which straddles mathematics and computer science, could easily remain unproved for another hundred years.

An approachable and illuminating history of mathematics as told through fourteen of its greatest problems, Visions of Infinity reveals how mathematicians the world over are rising to the challenges set by their predecessors and how the enigmas of the past inevitably surrender to the powerful techniques of the present.

About this title

About the Author

Ian Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and active researcher at the University of Warwick. The author of many books on mathematics, he lives in Coventry, England.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Few of us share Stewart’s mathematical skills. But we relish the intellectual stimulation of joining him in exploring mathematical problems that have pushed even genius to the limit. We thrill, for instance, to the ingenuity of a great Chinese mathematician coming tantalizingly close to proving the centuries-old Goldbach Conjecture. And we feel the human meaning of mathematical achievement when a triumphant British analyst weeps before television cameras after finally proving a seventeenth-century algebraic theorem. We feel that meaning again when a brilliant Russian mathematician retreats into reclusive isolation, distressed because of initial skepticism toward his groundbreaking work on a nineteenth-century riddle. But high-level mathematics stirs deep emotions largely because it taps into the mind’s deepest impulses. Stewart repeatedly shows how a trivial mathematical curiosity can open up vital new conceptual insights. Readers learn, for example, that the apparently inconsequential four-color problem has led investigators deep into theoretical physics and has compelled fundamental rethinking of what constitutes a mathematical proof in a computerized age. Proofs incorporating computer-generated calculations may strike old-school mathematicians as unsatisfying, but Stewart assures readers that mathematics still depends on human investigators and that such investigators will not soon run out of daunting mathematical problems. A bracing mental workout for amateur mathematicians. --Bryce Christensen

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0465022405
• ISBN 13: 9780465022403
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352