Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry 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. |
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LibraryThing Review
ユーザー レビュー - dcunning11235 - LibraryThingThis was, as advertised, a history of symmetry; I feel that I did not get a good understanding for what exactly symmetry is, in a more advanced sense, however, which is partially what I was after ... レビュー全文を読む
LibraryThing Review
ユーザー レビュー - Cheryl_in_CC_NV - LibraryThingThe author messed up. He frets aloud about giving us lay-readers too much math, and still apparently didn't get a layperson to edit it for him. He avoids giving us equations, choosing instead to ... レビュー全文を読む
目次
| 1 | |
| 17 | |
| 33 | |
| 45 | |
| 63 | |
| 75 | |
The Luckless Revolutionary | 97 |
The Mediocre Engineer and the Transcendent Professor | 125 |
The WouldBe Soldier and the Weakly Bookworm | 159 |
The Clerk from the Patent Office | 173 |
A Quantum Quintet | 199 |
The FiveDimensional Man | 221 |
The Political Journalist | 243 |
A Muddle of Mathematicians | 259 |
Seekers after Truth and Beauty | 275 |
Further Reading | 281 |
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多く使われている語句
Abel aether Albert angle atom Babylonian beauty became calculations called Cardano circle complex numbers construction cubic decimal dimensions discovered discovery Einstein electromagnetic electron Euclid Euclidean exactly exceptional Lie groups exist father Fermat primes field force formula fundamental Galois Galois’s Gamesh Gauss geometry gravity Greek group theory Hamilton Heisenberg idea Killing’s known Lagrange later Lie algebras light look mathe mathematicians mathematics matics Maxwell’s equations method moved multiplication negative numbers Newton Niels normed division algebra number system octonions particles permutations physicists physics Planck plane polygons problem proof proton proved quadratic quantum theory quarks quartic quaternions quintic quintic equation radicals real numbers relativity rotation Ruffini sack simple Lie algebras solution solve space space-time spin square root string theory structure subgroup superstrings supersymmetry symbols symmetry group Tartaglia tells theorem Theory of Everything thing tion transformations triangle trisect turned universe waves Wigner wrote
書誌情報
| 書籍名 | Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry |
| 著者 | Ian Stewart |
| 版 | イラスト付き, 再版 |
| 出版社 | Basic Books, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0465082378, 9780465082377 |
| ページ数 | 290 ページ |
| 引用のエクスポート | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |