Description
All too often, abstract mathematics, one of the most beautiful of human intellectual creations, is ground into the dry dust of drills and proofs. Useful, yes; exciting, no. Avner Ash and Robert Gross have done something different--by focusing on the ideas that modern mathematicians actually care about. Fearless Symmetry is a book about detecting hidden patterns, about finding definitions that clarify, about the study of numbers that has entranced some of our great thinkers for thousands of years. It is a book that takes on number theory in a way that a nonmathematician can follow-systematically but without a barrage of technicalities. Ash and Gross are two terrific guides who take the reader, scientist or layman, on a wonderful hike through concepts that matter, culminating in the extraordinary peaks that surround the irresistible, beckoning claim of Fermat's Last Theorem. -- Peter Galison, Harvard University
About the Author
Avner Ash is professor of mathematics at Boston College and the coauthor of "Smooth Compactification of Locally Symmetric Varieties". Robert Gross is associate professor of mathematics at Boston College.
Reviews
"The authors are to be admired for taking a very difficult topic and making it ... more accessible than it was before."--Timothy Gowers, Nature "The authors ... outline current research in mathematics and tell why it should hold interest even for people outside scientific and technological fields."--Science News "The book ... does a remarkable job in making the work it describes accessible to an audience without technical training in mathematics, while at the same time remaining faithful to the richness and power of this work. I recommend it to mathematicians and nonmathematicians alike with any interest in this subject."--William M. McGovern, SIAM Review "Unique... [T]his book is an amazing attempt to provide to a mathematically unsophisticated reader a realistic impression of the immense vitality of this area of mathematics."--Lindsay N. Childs, Mathematical Reviews "To borrow one of the authors' favorite words, this book is an amazing attempt to provide to a mathematically unsophisticated reader a realistic impression of the immense vitality of this area of mathematics. But I think the book has another useful role. With a very broad brush, it paints a beautiful picture of one of the main themes of the Langlands program."--Lindsay N. Childs, MathSciNet
Book Information
ISBN 9780691138718
Author Avner Ash
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press
Weight(grams) 454g