Why Beauty Is Truth

aw_product_id: 
40340902559
merchant_image_url: 
merchant_category: 
Books
search_price: 
18.99
book_author_name: 
Ian Stewart
book_type: 
Paperback
publisher: 
Basic Books
published_date: 
29/04/2008
isbn: 
9780465082377
Merchant Product Cat path: 
Books > Science, Technology & Medicine > Mathematics & science > Science: general issues
specifications: 
Ian Stewart|Paperback|Basic Books|29/04/2008
Merchant Product Id: 
9780465082377
Book Description: 
At the heart of relativity theory, quantum mechanics, string theory, and much of modern cosmology lies one concept: symmetry. In Why Beauty Is Truth , world-famous mathematician Ian Stewart narrates the history of the emergence of this remarkable area of study. Stewart introduces us to such characters as the Renaissance Italian genius, rogue, scholar, and gambler Girolamo Cardano, who stole the modern method of solving cubic equations and published it in the first important book on algebra, and the young revolutionary Evariste Galois, who refashioned the whole of mathematics and founded the field of group theory only to die in a pointless duel over a woman before his work was published. Stewart also explores the strange numerology of real mathematics, in which particular numbers have unique and unpredictable properties related to symmetry. He shows how Wilhelm Killing discovered Lie groups" with 14, 52, 78, 133, and 248 dimensions-groups whose very existence is a profound puzzle. Finally, Stewart describes the world beyond superstrings: the octonionic" symmetries that may explain the very existence of the universe.

Graphic Design by Ishmael Annobil /  Web Development by Ruzanna Hovasapyan