Spectrum
2 total works
An absorbing account of pure and applied mathematics from the geometry of Euclid to that of Riemann, and its application in Einstein's theory of relativity. The twenty chapters cover such topics as: algebra, number theory, logic, probability, infinite sets and the foundations of mathematics, rings, matrices, transformations, groups, geometry, and topology. Mathematics was republished in 1987 with corrections and an added foreword by Martin Gardner.
What Eric Temple Bell calls the last problem is the problem of proving 'Fermat's Last Theorem', which Fermat wrote in the margin of a book almost 350 years ago. The original text of The Last Problem traced the problem from 2000 BC to 17th century France. Along the way we learn quite a bit about history, and just as much about mathematics. Underwood Dudley's notes bring us up-to-date on recent attempts to solve the problem - for the latest printing, he has added a three page addendum about its recent proof by Andrew Wiles. This book fits no categories. It is not a book of mathematics: it is a biography of a famous problem. Pages go by without an equation appearing. It is both a history of number theory and its place in our civilisation, and a history of our civilisation's relationship with mathematics. This rich and varied, wide-ranging book, written with force and vigor by someone with a distinctive style and point of view will provide hours of enjoyable reading for anyone interested in mathematics.