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Mathematical Masterpieces: Time of JMM San Diego book signing
Posted:
Dec 28, 2007 12:58 PM
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Dear colleagues,
If you will be at the January 2008 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San
Diego, we hope you might like to come to a book signing sponsored by
Springer for our new book "Mathematical Masterpieces: Further Chronicles
by the Explorers", on Monday, January 7, at 10AM-12PM at the Springer
booth. Below is the description of the book I sent earlier.
Best wishes
David
David Pengelley (davidp@nmsu.edu)
Mathematics, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003 USA
Tel: 575-646-3901=dept., 575-646-2723=my office; Fax: 575-646-1064
http://math.nmsu.edu/~davidp
_____________________________________________________________________________
The new book "Mathematical Masterpieces" is based on original sources from
our course Great Theorems: The Art of Mathematics, presented as a capstone
for the undergraduate curriculum. Annotated historical texts tell the
stories of four great mathematical adventures through the millenia, in the
words of the discoverers, for which we provide context, explanation, and a
unifying view.
Here are four independent chapters telling the stories of the Bernoulli numbers
as the passage between discrete and continuous phenomena, the search for
numerical solutions to equations throughout time, the discovery of curvature
and geometric space, and the quest for patterns in prime numbers. Each story is
told through the words of the pioneers of mathematical thought. Particular
advantages of the historical approach include providing context to mathematical
inquiry, perspective to proposed conceptual solutions, and a glimpse into the
direction research has taken.
The text is ideal for an undergraduate seminar, independent reading, an upper
division history of mathematics course, a capstone course for majors, or upper
division enrichment for majors in secondary mathematics education, engineering,
or the sciences. It offers a wealth of student exercises with a prerequisite of
at most multivariable calculus, and has many portraits, artwork, facsimiles of
original works, and figures.
You may see and read many sections from Mathematical Masterpieces at our web
pages http://www.math.nmsu.edu/~history, as well as much related information on
teaching with primary sources.
Our chapters are
* The Bridge Between Continuous and Discrete
* Solving Equations Numerically: Finding Our Roots
* Curvature and the Notion of Space
* Patterns in Prime Numbers: The Quadratic Reciprocity Law,
and the authors of some of the original sources around which the chapter
stories are respectively crafted are Archimedes, Fermat, Pascal, Jakob
Bernoulli, Euler; Khayyam, Qin, Cardano, Newton, Simpson, Smale; Huygens,
Newton, Euler, Gauss, Riemann; Euler, Lagrange, Legendre, Gauss, Eisenstein.
We hope that you or your students may enjoy the book and find it rewarding.
Best wishes,
David Pengelley (and coauthors Arthur Knoebel, Reinhard Laubenbacher, Jerry
Lodder)
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