Equation That Couldn't be Solved: How a Mathmatical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry - Softcover

Livio, Mario

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0285637894 ISBN 13: 9780285637894

Verlag: Souvenir Press, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

For centuries the phenomenon of symmetry had defied mathematicians' attempts to define it in a single equation. The attempt to create this equation, the quintic equation, would open up a route to group theory, and group theory lies at the heart of modern science and modern technology. The discovery of group theory paved the way for Einstein's theory of general relativity, modern physics and the search for a unifying theory of the cosmos. I have no time , wrote Evariste Galois in the margin of his manuscript which finally solved the quintic equation, and invented a new branch of mathematics, that of group theory. Aged only twenty he died shortly after in a duel, regarded as one of the greatest scholars of his age and as a revolutionary in Louis Philippe's France he was a member of the same republican society as Alexandre Dumas (and was imprisoned along with the poet Gerard de Nerval for his political sympathies).

Über diesen Titel

Críticas

"A wide-ranging exploration of the phenomenon of symmetry....There's math, yes, but there are also tales of love, violence, history -- and the whole, in this case, turns out to be greater than the sum of those parts."-- Mary Carmichael, "Newsweek"

Reseña del editor

Symmetry is the concept that bridges the worlds of art and science, a concept that spans the world of theoretical physics and the everyday world we see around us. This book shows how group theory can explain the symmetry and order of both the natural and the human-made worlds.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Souvenir Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0285637894
• ISBN 13: 9780285637894
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar