Why Beauty Is Truth

by Stewart, Ian

• ISBN13: 9780465082360
• ISBN10: 046508236X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-09
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Ian Stewart is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and is well known for his writing and broadcasting about mathematics for nonspecialists. He has written over 140 research papers on such subjects as symmetry in dynamics, pattern formation, chaos, and mathematical biology, as well as numerous popular books, including Letters to a Young Mathematician, Does God Play Dice?, What Shape Is a Snowflake?, Nature’s Numbers, The Annotated Flatland, and Flatterland. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. He lives in Coventry, England.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
The Scribes of Babylon	p. 1
The Household Name	p. 17
The Persian Poet	p. 33
The Gambling Scholar	p. 45
The Cunning Fox	p. 63
The Frustrated Doctor and the Sickly Genius	p. 75
The Luckless Revolutionary	p. 97
The Mediocre Engineer and the Transcendent Professor	p. 125
The Drunken Vandal	p. 137
The Would-Be Soldier and the Weakly Bookworm	p. 159
The Clerk from the Patent Office	p. 173
A Quantum Quintet	p. 199
The Five-Dimensional Man	p. 221
The Political Journalist	p. 243
A Muddle of Mathematicians	p. 259
Seekers after Truth and Beauty	p. 275
Further Reading	p. 281
Index	p. 283
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.