Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components

September 27, 2007 5:31 AM

More than fifty selected articles from The Princeton Companion of Mathematics (username: Guest, password: PCM) — a thematically-organized compendium of mathematics and mathematicians from Fields Medal-winner Tim Gowers. [via, previously]
posted by Blazecock Pileon (8 comments total)

I wrote the article on "Arithmetic Geometry" (one of the available sample pieces) which tries to give an accessible account of what's going on in that field (there are equations, but in the first half of the piece there's nothing past algebra II.)

Non-mathematicians might especially enjoy the articles at the front of the book, in which the contributors (largely Gowers himself in this section) talk about what mathematics is, how it's done, and why we do it.
posted by escabeche at 5:41 AM on September 27, 2007

As far as possible, the book should be comprehensible to a typical first-year undergraduate, or even mathematically interested lay reader.

And the list of mathematical objects is as long as my arm. Whoa. Naturally the library at my workplace doesn't have a copy. I think they must have some kind of telepathic bond with me to ensure that anything I might be remotely interested in is strictly excluded. Plenty of material on Perl and FORTRAIN, though!!
posted by DU at 6:14 AM on September 27, 2007

Plenty of material on Perl and FORTRAIN, though!!

Backus of code, and not of vine
Did forge by toil a new creation,
A lofty language line by line
for swift formula translation.
posted by zamboni at 6:28 AM on September 27, 2007

DU, the book's not out until 2008. Hopefully your library will have a copy then!
posted by escabeche at 7:11 AM on September 27, 2007

Oh wow. This looks like a perfect resource for someone like me who likes mathematics, knows only a little, but spends a lot of time around people who know a ton. I can't wait for this thing to come out!
posted by painquale at 8:08 AM on September 27, 2007

I highly recommend The Honors Class- Hilbert's Problems and their Solvers if you're interested in this kind of thing (as I am!)
posted by jcruelty at 12:46 PM on September 27, 2007

"Error: unauthorised access "
posted by neuron at 12:55 PM on September 27, 2007

Yep, definitely buying this for my library's math collection.
posted by Quiplash at 8:26 PM on September 27, 2007