Celestial Encounters: The Origins of Chaos and Stability
Paperback
- Price:
- $35.00/拢38.00
- ISBN:
- Published:
- Mar 28, 1999
- Copyright:
- 1996
- Pages:
- 256
- Size:
- 7.75 x 10 in.
- 23 halftones 64 line illus.
- Main_subject:
- Mathematics
ebook
Celestial Encounters is for anyone who has ever wondered about the foundations of chaos. In 1888, the 34-year-old Henri Poincar茅 submitted a paper that was to change the course of science, but not before it underwent significant changes itself. 鈥淭he Three-Body Problem and the Equations of Dynamics鈥� won a prize sponsored by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway and the journal Acta Mathematica, but after accepting the prize, Poincar茅 found a serious mistake in his work. While correcting it, he discovered the phenomenon of chaos.
Starting with the story of Poincar茅’s work, Florin Diacu and Philip Holmes trace the history of attempts to solve the problems of celestial mechanics first posed in Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1686. In describing how mathematical rigor was brought to bear on one of our oldest fascinations—the motions of the heavens—they introduce the people whose ideas led to the flourishing field now called nonlinear dynamics.
In presenting the modern theory of dynamical systems, the models underlying much of modern science are described pictorially, using the geometrical language invented by Poincar茅. More generally, the authors reflect on mathematical creativity and the roles that chance encounters, politics, and circumstance play in it.
Awards and Recognition
- One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1997