This is a book about the imagination in general and about the mathematical imagination in particular. Barry Mazur considers the range of our imaginative experiences. When we read a line of poetry - "The yellow of the tulip" - what is it we experience in the mind's eye? And when we imagine a number, in particular an impossible number such as the square root of a negative quantity, what imaginative object might this bring to mind?
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Illustrationen
bibliography, notes, index
Maße
Höhe: 200 mm
Breite: 135 mm
Dicke: 30 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-7139-9630-2 (9780713996302)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Barry Mazur is a celebrated pure mathematician. He is University Professor at Harvard, Harvard's most distinguished faculty post. His work has been influential in many fields and proved vital for the solution of Fermat Last Theorem. Known for the technique called "Mazur's Swindle".
Part I: The imagination and square roots; square roots and imagination; looking at numbers; permission and laws; economy of expression; justifying laws. Part II: Bombelli's puzzle; stretching the image; putting geometry into numbers. Part III: The literature of discovery of geometry in numbers; understanding algebra via geometry.
