I Want to Be a Mathematician: An Automathography in Three Parts (Maa Spectrum Series) - Softcover

Halmos, P. R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0883854457 ISBN 13: 9780883854457

Publisher: Mathematical Assn of Amer, 1988

Synopsis

"I Want To Be A Mathematician" is an account of the author's life as a mathematician. It tells us what it is like to be a mathematician and to do mathematics. It will be read with interest and enjoyment by those in mathematics and by those who might want to know what mathematicians and mathematical careers are like. Paul Halmos is well-known for his research in ergodic theory, and measure theory. He is one of the most widely read mathematical expositors in the world.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Halmos received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, writing his dissertation under the direction of J. L. Doob. After a period at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, where he was assistant to John von Neumann (1940-42), he returned briefly to Illinois. Since then he has held faculty positions at the following universities: Illinois, Syracuse, Chicago, Michigan (Ann Arbor), Hawaii, California (Santa Barbara), Indiana, and Santa Clara, where he became professor emeritus in 1995. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Tulane, Montevideo, Miami (Florida), California (Berkeley), Washington (Seattle), Edinburgh, Chiao Tung (Taiwan), and Western Australia, as well as several visits to the IAS. He has written over 100 research papers and many reviews in his principal research fields of operator theory, algebraic logic, and ergodic theory, with additional work in topological groups, probability, statistics, and Boolean algebras. Honors have included a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and honorary doctorates from St. Andrews, DePauw, Waterloo, and Kalamazoo. Widely known as an editor, in addition to his years of editing the American Mathematical Monthly, Paul Halmos has held similar positions with Mathematical Reviews, the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, the Journal fur die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik (Crelle's Journal), Mathematical Spectrum, the Indiana Journal of Mathematics, as well as the Ergebniße der Mathematik, the Undergraduate Texts series, the Graduate Texts series and the Problem Books series for Springer-Verlag.

Review

Halmos... an outstanding research mathematician, and a great expositor whose writing is not only clear, but a delight to read. --Melvin Henricksen, Historia Mathematica

A frank, personal, witty commentary on mathematicians and mathematics by one of the most influential mathematicians of our time --Henry Helson, Mathematical Reviews

A truly unique book, which nobody but Paul Halmos could have written. I think it will be a classic. --Constance Reid

Edition details

• Publisher: Mathematical Assn of Amer
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0883854457
• ISBN 13: 9780883854457
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 442