Hilbert-Courant
By Constance Reid
* Publisher: Springer
* Number Of Pages: 547
* Publication Date: 1986-05-22
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0387962565
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780387962566
Product Description:
The interlocking lives of two very different and unique men have been brought together for the first time in this combined edition of Constance Reid's two popular books. The resulting volume spans more than a century of dramatic scientific history, described in the lively nontechnical style which is the hallmark of Mrs. Reid's work.
Summary: For non-mathematicians by a non-mathematician author
Rating: 5
Constance Reid is a non-mathematician author, so she is the best person who can explain the 'abstract' modern math to the curious non-mathematicians. By following the book on the Greatest mathematician in 20th AD, the readers can understand the major development of Modern Math evolved around Hilbert and all the world's top mathematicians gathered in Gottingen before WWII.
Most of us learn abstract math without knowing the background from which these abstract concepts were derived. In this book (chapter VI: Changes) I learn from Reid the simple yet revealing explanation of 'Ideals' being born out of conflict of 'Algebraic Number Field' with the 'Fundamental Law of Arithmetics', and Kummer's Ideal Number, Kronecker and Dedekind's complicated 'Ideal Primes', and finaly David Hilbert's great contribution in the 'Ideal Primes' theory.
Summary: David Hilbert
Rating: 5
A excellent biography of the German mathematician David Hilbert. Particularly poignant is the loss of Minknowski and the decline of mathematics at Gottingen following the Nazi prosecutions.
Summary: David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians ever
Rating: 5
David Hilbert was arguably one of the greatest mathematicians
ever!. He contributed to several branches of mathematics,
including functional analysis, mathematical physics,
calculus of variations, and algebraic number theory.
(Everyone knows what a Hilbert space is right!)
At the turn of the 20th century, Hilbert enumerated
23 unsolved problems of mathematics that he considered worthy
of further investigation. To this day, very few of these, including
the 10th problem, on the finite solvability of Diophantine
equations, have been resolved! (thanks to
Yuri Matiyasevich, Martin Davis and Julia Robinson!).
Besides, Hilbert was also a character (read the section
when Norbert Weiner of cybernetics fame, came to give
a talk at Gottingen, and .... :-)).
Incidentally the author Constance Reid is the sister of
Julia Robinson (of Hilbert's 10th problem fame!),
hence there can no one better to write about
Hilbert!. Besides Constance Reid is a well known chronicler
of mathematicians lives (this one is a tour de force and
her best!).
No one can can call himself/herself a mathematician without
having Reid's book on his/her bookshelf. Strongly
recommended!
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