Why beauty is truth
| Title | Why beauty is truth
a history of symmetry |
|---|---|
| Author | Stewart, Ian |
| Publication | Basic |
| Size | XI, 290p |
| Language |  ENG |
| ISBN | 9780465082360 |
| Topics |
Symmetry--History Symmetry |
| Notes | Publisher description for Why beauty is truth : a history of symmetry / Ian Stewart.At the heart of relativity theory, quantum mechanics, string theory, and much of modern cosmology lies one concept: symmetry. In Why Beauty Is Truth, world-famous mathematician Ian Stewart narrates the history of the emergence of this remarkable area of study. Stewart introduces us to such characters as the Renaissance Italian genius, rogue, scholar, and gambler Girolamo Cardano, who stole the modern method of solving cubic equations and published it in the first important book on algebra, and the young revolutionary Evariste Galois, who refashioned the whole of mathematics and founded the field of group theory only to die in a pointless duel over a woman before his work was published. Stewart also explores the strange numerology of real mathematics, in which particular numbers have unique and unpredictable properties related to symmetry. He shows how Wilhelm Killing discovered “Lie groups” with 14, 52, 78, 133, and 248 dimensions-groups whose very existence is a profound puzzle. Finally, Stewart describes the world beyond superstrings: the “octonionic” symmetries that may explain the very existence of the universe.=============================================================================================================================================================================Table of contents for Why beauty is truth : a history of symmetry / Ian Stewart.CONTENTSPreface 1 The Scribes of Babylon2 The Household Name3 The Arabian Poet4 The Gambling Scholar5 The Cunning Fox6 The Frustrated Doctor and the Sickly Genius 7 The Luckless Revolutionary 8 The Mediocre Engineer and the Transcendent Professor 9 The Drunken Vandal 10 The Would-Be Soldier and the Weakly Bookworm 11 The Clerk from the Patent Office 12 A Quantum Quintet 13 The Five-Dimensional Man 14 The Political Journalist 15 A Muddle of Mathematicians 16 Seekers after Truth and Beauty Further Reading Index |
539.725
STEW 23
26328
Available
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