Circles Of Mathematics

Circles: A Mathematical View

This revised edition of a mathematical classic originally published in 1957 will bring to a new generation of students the enjoyment of investigating that simplest of mathematical figures, the circle. The author has supplemented this new edition with a special chapter designed to introduce readers to the vocabulary of circle concepts with which the readers of two generations ago were familiar. Readers of Circles need only be armed with paper, pencil, compass, and straight edge to find great pleasure in following the constructions and theorems. Those who think that geometry using Euclidean tools died out with the ancient Greeks will be pleasantly surprised to learn many interesting results which were only discovered in modern times. Novices and experts alike will find much to enlighten them in chapters dealing with the representation of a circle by a point in three-space, a model for non-Euclidean geometry, and the isoperimetric property of the circle.

Mathematical Circles

Circles Disturbed

Why narrative is essential to mathematics Circles Disturbed brings together important thinkers in mathematics, history, and philosophy to explore the relationship between mathematics and narrative. The book's title recalls the last words of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was slain by a Roman soldier—"Don't disturb my circles"—words that seem to refer to two radically different concerns: that of the practical person living in the concrete world of reality, and that of the theoretician lost in a world of abstraction. Stories and theorems are, in a sense, the natural languages of these two worlds—stories representing the way we act and interact, and theorems giving us pure thought, distilled from the hustle and bustle of reality. Yet, though the voices of stories and theorems seem totally different, they share profound connections and similarities. A book unlike any other, Circles Disturbed delves into topics such as the way in which historical and biographical narratives shape our understanding of mathematics and mathematicians, the development of "myths of origins" in mathematics, the structure and importance of mathematical dreams, the role of storytelling in the formation of mathematical intuitions, the ways mathematics helps us organize the way we think about narrative structure, and much more. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Amir Alexander, David Corfield, Peter Galison, Timothy Gowers, Michael Harris, David Herman, Federica La Nave, G.E.R. Lloyd, Uri Margolin, Colin McLarty, Jan Christoph Meister, Arkady Plotnitsky, and Bernard Teissier.