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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
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Searching... | 30000010192663 | QA29.E8 E95 2007 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
When an important mathematician celebrates a landmark birthday, other mathematicians sometimes gather together to give papers in appreciation of the life and work of the great person. When a mathematician as influential and productive as Euler celebrates an anniversary as important as the 300th, a single meeting isn't sufficient to present all of the contributions. Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was the most important mathematician of the 18th century. His collected works, with 800 books and articles, fill over 70 large volumes. He revolutionized real analysis and mathematical physics, single-handedly established the field of analytic number theory, and made important contributions to almost every other branch of mathematics. A great pedagogue as well as a great researcher, his textbooks educated the next generation of mathematicians. During the years leading up to Leonhard Euler's tercentenary, at more than a dozen academic meetings across the USA and Canada, mathematicians and historians of mathematics honored Euler in papers detailing his life and work. This book collects more than 20 papers based on some of the most memorable of these contributions. These papers are accessible to a broad mathematical audience. They will appeal to those who already have an interest in the history of mathematics. For those who don't, they will serve as a compelling introduction to the subject, focused on the accomplishments of one of the great mathematical minds of all time. Topics include analysis - especially Euler's fearless and masterful manipulation of power series - geometry, algebra, probability, astronomy and mechanics.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Leonhard Euler towered over 18th-century mathematics, in terms of both the significance and the breadth of his contributions to pure and applied mathematics. The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has responded to Euler's 2007 tercentennial with no fewer than five volumes, of which Euler at 300 is the fifth and a most worthy contribution. It is a compendium of 21 papers delivered at various meetings and conferences beginning in 2001. Only one of the chapters, J.H. Barnett's "Enter, Stage Center: The Early Drama of Hyperbolic Functions," has otherwise appeared in print (in Mathematics Magazine, in 2004), so the editors and the MAA have performed a real service by making this material available to a wider audience. Individual chapters range from historical perspectives (3 papers), to discussions of particular aspects of the work of Euler and others--in areas of pure mathematics (13 papers) and to applied problems (the final 5 papers). The writing is at a uniformly high level and should interest both historians of mathematics and, indeed, any mathematician with a fondness for Euler (meaning everyone!). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. S. J. Colley Oberlin College
Table of Contents
Introduction |
Leonhard Euler, the decade 1750-1760Rndiger Thiele |
Euler's fourteen problemsC. Edward Sandifer |
The Euler archive: giving Euler to the world DominicKlyve and Lee Stemkoski |
The Euler-Bernoulli proof of the fundamental theorem of algebraChristopher Baltus |
The quadrature of Lunes, from Hippocrates to EulerStacy G. Langton |
What is a function?Rndiger Thiele |
Enter, stage center: the early drama of the hyperbolic functionsJanet Heine Barnett |
Euler's solution of the Basel problem - the longer storyC. Edward Sandifer |
Euler and elliptic integralsLawrence D'Antonio |
Euler's observations on harmonic progressionsMark McKinzie |
Origins of a classic formalist argument: power series expansions of the logarithmic and exponential functionsMark McKinzie |
Taylor and Euler: linking the discrete and continuousDick Jardine |
Dances between continuous and discrete: Euler's summation formulaDavid J. Pengelley |
Some combinatorics in Jacob Bernoulli's Ars ConjectandiStacy G. Langton |
The Genoese lottery and the partition functionRobert E. Bradley |
Parallels in the work of Leonhard Euler and Thomas ClausenCarolyn Lathrop and Lee Stemkoski |
Three bodies? Why not four? The motion of the Lunar ApsidesRobert E. Bradley |
'The fabric of the universe is most perfect': Euler's research on elastic curvesLawrence D'Antonio |
The Euler advection equationRoger Godard |
Euler rows the boaC. Edward Sandifer |
Lambert, Euler, and Lagrange as map makersGeorge W. Heine, III |
Index |