MARC Record from harvard_bibliographic_metadata

LEADER: 02670nam a2200289 a 45e0
001 009114099-4
005 20030703131515.0
008 020806s2003 maua b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2002031991
015 $aGBA3-Y5290
020 $a0262162164 (alk. paper)
035 0 $aocm50440844
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dYDX$dUKM
042 $apcc
050 00 $aQA212$b.P47 2003
082 00 $a512.9/4$221
100 1 $aPesic, Peter.
245 10 $aAbel's proof :$ban essay on the sources and meaning of mathematical unsolvability /$cPeter Pesic.
260 $aCambridge, Mass. :$bMIT Press,$cc2003.
300 $aviii, 213 p. :$bill. ;$c21 cm.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [181]-201) and index.
505 0 $aThe scandal of the irrational -- Controversy and coefficients -- Impossibilities and imaginaries -- Spirals and seashores -- Premonitions and permutations -- Abel's proof -- Abel and Galois -- Seeing symmetries -- The order of things -- Solving the unsolvable.
520 1 $a"In 1824 a young Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel proved conclusively that algebraic equations of the fifth order are not solvable in radicals. In this book Peter Pesic shows what an important event this was in the history of thought. Abel was twenty-one when he self-published his proof and he died five years later, poor and depressed, just before the proof started to receive wide acclaim. Abel's attempts to reach out to the mathematical elite of the day had been spurned, and he was unable to find a position that would allow him to work in peace and mary his fiancee." "But Pesic's story begins long before Abel and continues to the present day, for Abel's proof changed how we think about mathematics and its relation to the "real" world. Starting with the Greeks, who invented the idea of mathematical proof, Pesic shows how mathematics found its sources in the real world (the shapes of things, the accounting needs of merchants) and then reached beyond those sources toward something more universal. The Pythagoreans' attempts to deal with irrational numbers foreshadowed the slow emergence of abstract mathematics. Pesic focuses on the contested development of algebra - which even Newton resisted - and the gradual acceptance of the usefulness and perhaps even beauty of abstractions that seem to invoke realities with dimensions outside human experience. Pesic tells this story as a history of ideas, with mathematical details incorporated in boxes. The book also includes a new annotated translation of Abel's original proof."--Jacket.
600 10 $aAbel, Niels Henrik,$d1802-1829.
650 0 $aEquations, Roots of.
988 $a20030624
906 $0DLC