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Who Gave You the Epsilon?: and Other Tales of Mathematical History
 
Edited by: Marlow Anderson
Victor Katz
Robin Wilson
Who Gave You the Epsilon?
MAA Press: An Imprint of the American Mathematical Society
Hardcover ISBN:  978-0-88385-569-0
Product Code:  SPEC/63
List Price: $65.00
MAA Member Price: $48.75
AMS Member Price: $48.75
eBook ISBN:  978-1-61444-504-3
Product Code:  SPEC/63.E
List Price: $50.00
MAA Member Price: $37.50
AMS Member Price: $37.50
Hardcover ISBN:  978-0-88385-569-0
eBook: ISBN:  978-1-61444-504-3
Product Code:  SPEC/63.B
List Price: $115.00 $90.00
MAA Member Price: $86.25 $67.50
AMS Member Price: $86.25 $67.50
Add to cart
Who Gave You the Epsilon?
Click above image for expanded view
Who Gave You the Epsilon?: and Other Tales of Mathematical History
Edited by: Marlow Anderson
Victor Katz
Robin Wilson
MAA Press: An Imprint of the American Mathematical Society
Hardcover ISBN:  978-0-88385-569-0
Product Code:  SPEC/63
List Price: $65.00
MAA Member Price: $48.75
AMS Member Price: $48.75
eBook ISBN:  978-1-61444-504-3
Product Code:  SPEC/63.E
List Price: $50.00
MAA Member Price: $37.50
AMS Member Price: $37.50
Hardcover ISBN:  978-0-88385-569-0
eBook ISBN:  978-1-61444-504-3
Product Code:  SPEC/63.B
List Price: $115.00 $90.00
MAA Member Price: $86.25 $67.50
AMS Member Price: $86.25 $67.50
Add to cart
  • Book Details
     
     
    Spectrum
    Volume: 63; 2009; 431 pp

    This book picks up the history of mathematics from where Sherlock Holmes in Babylon left it. The forty articles of Who Gave You the Epsilon? continue the story of the development of mathematics into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The articles have all been published in the Mathematical Association of America journals and are in many cases written by distinguished mathematicians such as G. H. Hardy and B. van der Waerden. The articles are arranged thematically to show the development of analysis, geometry, algebra and number theory through this period. Each chapter is preceded by a Foreword, giving the historical background and setting and the scene, and is followed by an Afterword, reporting on advances in our historical knowledge and understanding since the articles first appeared. This book is ideal for anyone wanting to explore the history of mathematics.
  • Table of Contents
     
     
    • Analysis [ MR 2605650 ]
    • Foreword
    • Who Gave You the Epsilon? Cauchy and the Origins of Rigorous Calculus, Judith V. Grabiner
    • Evolution of the Function Concept: A Brief Survey, Israel Kleiner
    • S. Kovalevsky: A Mathematical Lesson, Karen D. Rappaport
    • Highlights in the History of Spectral Theory, L. A. Steen
    • Alan Turing and the Central Limit Theorem, S. L. Zabell
    • Why did George Green Write his Essay of 1828 on Electricity and Magnetism?, I. Grattan-Guinness
    • Connectivity and Smoke-Rings: Green’s Second Identity in its First Fifty Years, Thomas Archibald
    • The History of Stokes’ Theorem, Victor J. Katz
    • The Mathematical Collaboration of M. L. Cartwright and J. E. Littlewood, Shawnee L. McMurran and James J. Tattersall
    • Dr. David Harold Blackwell, African American Pioneer, Nkechi Agwu, Luella Smith and Aissatou Barry
    • Afterword
    • Geometry, Topology and Foundations [ MR 2605650 ]
    • Foreword
    • Gauss and the Non-Euclidean Geometry, George Bruce Halsted
    • History of the Parallel Postulate, Florence P. Lewis
    • The Rise and Fall of Projective Geometry, J. L. Coolidge
    • Notes on the History of Geometrical Ideas, Dan Pedoe
    • A note on the history of the Cantor set and Cantor function, Julian F. Fleron
    • Evolution of the Topological Concept of “Connected”, R. L. Wilder
    • A Brief, Subjective History of Homology and Homotopy Theory in this Century, Peter Hilton
    • The Origins of Modern Axiomatics: Pasch to Peano, H. C. Kennedy
    • C. S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Infinite Sets, Joseph W. Dauben
    • On the Development of Logics between the two World Wars, I. Grattan-Guinness
    • Dedekind’s Theorem: $\sqrt {2}\times \sqrt {3}=\sqrt {6}$, David Fowler
    • Afterword
    • Algebra and Number Theory [ MR 2605650 ]
    • Foreword
    • Hamilton’s Discovery of Quaternions, B. L. van der Waerden
    • Hamilton, Rodrigues, and the Quaternion Scandal, Simon L. Altmann
    • Building an International Reputation: The Case of J. J. Sylvester (1814–1897), Karen Hunger Parshall and Eugene Seneta
    • The Foundation Period in the History of Group Theory, Josephine E. Burns
    • The Evolution of Group Theory: A Brief Survey, Israel Kleiner
    • The Search for Finite Simple Groups, Joseph A. Gallian
    • Genius and Biographers: The Fictionalization of Evariste Galois, Tony Rothman
    • Hermann Grassmann and the Creation of Linear Algebra, Desmond Fearnley-Sander
    • The Roots of Commutative Algebra in Algebraic Number Theory, Israel Kleiner
    • Eisenstein’s Misunderstood Geometric Proof of the Quadratic Reciprocity Theorem, Reinhard C. Laubenbacher and David J. Pengelley
    • Waring’s Problem, Charles Small
    • A History of the Prime Number Theorem, L. J. Goldstein
    • A Hundred Years of Prime Numbers, Paul T. Bateman and Harold G. Diamond
    • The Indian Mathematician Ramanujan, G. H. Hardy
    • Emmy Noether, Clark H. Kimberling
    • “A Marvelous Proof,” Fernando Q. Gouvêa
    • Afterword
    • Surveys [ MR 2605650 ]
    • Foreword
    • The International Congress of Mathematicians, George Bruce Halsted
    • A Popular Account of Some New Fields of Thought in Mathematics, G. A. Miller
    • A Half-century of Mathematics, Hermann Weyl
    • Mathematics at the Turn of the Millennium, Philip A. Griffiths
    • Afterword
  • Reviews
     
     

    • As a collection of interesting articles on the history of 19th- and 20th-century mathematics, the present volume is hard to beat. The 41 papers, covering many diverse areas, not just calculus, are mostly accessible to undergraduate mathematics majors, yet their professors will also likely enjoy them and learn quite a bit as well. Highly Recommended.
      C. Bauer, Choice

    • The present volume is a sequel to Sherlock Holmes in Babylon and other tales of mathematical history, MAA Spectrum, Math Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 2004. The earlier book treated the period before 1800, while this book describes developments in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is an anthology of over 40 papers previously published in journals of the Mathematical Association of America, the majority in the American Mathematical Monthly, about a third in Mathematics Magazine and two in the College Mathematics Journal. Except for seven .Monthly papers from the years 1900 (2), 1913, 1920, 1934, 1937, and 1951, all the papers appeared between 1972 and 2000 inclusive. Many of the authors are respected historians of mathematics. Each of the four chapters is bracketed by a Foreword that gets forth the themes and an Afterward that provides a guide for further reading. There is a good mixture of material that focuses on mathematical developments and that treats the personalities and sociology of the mathematical community. For some topics, the treatment is quite detailed. In such a collection as this, the choice of topics is of necessity unbalanced; the papers are sorted into three chapters under the broad themes of analysis, geometry and axiomatics, and algebra and number theory. The final chapter includes three papers that survey the state of mathematics at the beginning, the midpoint and the end of the 20th century. This collection can be read with profit and enjoyment by both professional mathematicians and undergraduate students specializing in mathematics.
      E.J. Barbeau, Mathematical Reviews
  • Requests
     
     
    Review Copy – for publishers of book reviews
    Accessibility – to request an alternate format of an AMS title
Spectrum
Volume: 63; 2009; 431 pp

This book picks up the history of mathematics from where Sherlock Holmes in Babylon left it. The forty articles of Who Gave You the Epsilon? continue the story of the development of mathematics into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The articles have all been published in the Mathematical Association of America journals and are in many cases written by distinguished mathematicians such as G. H. Hardy and B. van der Waerden. The articles are arranged thematically to show the development of analysis, geometry, algebra and number theory through this period. Each chapter is preceded by a Foreword, giving the historical background and setting and the scene, and is followed by an Afterword, reporting on advances in our historical knowledge and understanding since the articles first appeared. This book is ideal for anyone wanting to explore the history of mathematics.
  • Analysis [ MR 2605650 ]
  • Foreword
  • Who Gave You the Epsilon? Cauchy and the Origins of Rigorous Calculus, Judith V. Grabiner
  • Evolution of the Function Concept: A Brief Survey, Israel Kleiner
  • S. Kovalevsky: A Mathematical Lesson, Karen D. Rappaport
  • Highlights in the History of Spectral Theory, L. A. Steen
  • Alan Turing and the Central Limit Theorem, S. L. Zabell
  • Why did George Green Write his Essay of 1828 on Electricity and Magnetism?, I. Grattan-Guinness
  • Connectivity and Smoke-Rings: Green’s Second Identity in its First Fifty Years, Thomas Archibald
  • The History of Stokes’ Theorem, Victor J. Katz
  • The Mathematical Collaboration of M. L. Cartwright and J. E. Littlewood, Shawnee L. McMurran and James J. Tattersall
  • Dr. David Harold Blackwell, African American Pioneer, Nkechi Agwu, Luella Smith and Aissatou Barry
  • Afterword
  • Geometry, Topology and Foundations [ MR 2605650 ]
  • Foreword
  • Gauss and the Non-Euclidean Geometry, George Bruce Halsted
  • History of the Parallel Postulate, Florence P. Lewis
  • The Rise and Fall of Projective Geometry, J. L. Coolidge
  • Notes on the History of Geometrical Ideas, Dan Pedoe
  • A note on the history of the Cantor set and Cantor function, Julian F. Fleron
  • Evolution of the Topological Concept of “Connected”, R. L. Wilder
  • A Brief, Subjective History of Homology and Homotopy Theory in this Century, Peter Hilton
  • The Origins of Modern Axiomatics: Pasch to Peano, H. C. Kennedy
  • C. S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Infinite Sets, Joseph W. Dauben
  • On the Development of Logics between the two World Wars, I. Grattan-Guinness
  • Dedekind’s Theorem: $\sqrt {2}\times \sqrt {3}=\sqrt {6}$, David Fowler
  • Afterword
  • Algebra and Number Theory [ MR 2605650 ]
  • Foreword
  • Hamilton’s Discovery of Quaternions, B. L. van der Waerden
  • Hamilton, Rodrigues, and the Quaternion Scandal, Simon L. Altmann
  • Building an International Reputation: The Case of J. J. Sylvester (1814–1897), Karen Hunger Parshall and Eugene Seneta
  • The Foundation Period in the History of Group Theory, Josephine E. Burns
  • The Evolution of Group Theory: A Brief Survey, Israel Kleiner
  • The Search for Finite Simple Groups, Joseph A. Gallian
  • Genius and Biographers: The Fictionalization of Evariste Galois, Tony Rothman
  • Hermann Grassmann and the Creation of Linear Algebra, Desmond Fearnley-Sander
  • The Roots of Commutative Algebra in Algebraic Number Theory, Israel Kleiner
  • Eisenstein’s Misunderstood Geometric Proof of the Quadratic Reciprocity Theorem, Reinhard C. Laubenbacher and David J. Pengelley
  • Waring’s Problem, Charles Small
  • A History of the Prime Number Theorem, L. J. Goldstein
  • A Hundred Years of Prime Numbers, Paul T. Bateman and Harold G. Diamond
  • The Indian Mathematician Ramanujan, G. H. Hardy
  • Emmy Noether, Clark H. Kimberling
  • “A Marvelous Proof,” Fernando Q. Gouvêa
  • Afterword
  • Surveys [ MR 2605650 ]
  • Foreword
  • The International Congress of Mathematicians, George Bruce Halsted
  • A Popular Account of Some New Fields of Thought in Mathematics, G. A. Miller
  • A Half-century of Mathematics, Hermann Weyl
  • Mathematics at the Turn of the Millennium, Philip A. Griffiths
  • Afterword

  • As a collection of interesting articles on the history of 19th- and 20th-century mathematics, the present volume is hard to beat. The 41 papers, covering many diverse areas, not just calculus, are mostly accessible to undergraduate mathematics majors, yet their professors will also likely enjoy them and learn quite a bit as well. Highly Recommended.
    C. Bauer, Choice

  • The present volume is a sequel to Sherlock Holmes in Babylon and other tales of mathematical history, MAA Spectrum, Math Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 2004. The earlier book treated the period before 1800, while this book describes developments in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is an anthology of over 40 papers previously published in journals of the Mathematical Association of America, the majority in the American Mathematical Monthly, about a third in Mathematics Magazine and two in the College Mathematics Journal. Except for seven .Monthly papers from the years 1900 (2), 1913, 1920, 1934, 1937, and 1951, all the papers appeared between 1972 and 2000 inclusive. Many of the authors are respected historians of mathematics. Each of the four chapters is bracketed by a Foreword that gets forth the themes and an Afterward that provides a guide for further reading. There is a good mixture of material that focuses on mathematical developments and that treats the personalities and sociology of the mathematical community. For some topics, the treatment is quite detailed. In such a collection as this, the choice of topics is of necessity unbalanced; the papers are sorted into three chapters under the broad themes of analysis, geometry and axiomatics, and algebra and number theory. The final chapter includes three papers that survey the state of mathematics at the beginning, the midpoint and the end of the 20th century. This collection can be read with profit and enjoyment by both professional mathematicians and undergraduate students specializing in mathematics.
    E.J. Barbeau, Mathematical Reviews
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