Abel's Proof An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability

Name: Abel's Proof An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability
Price: 6.17 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780262661829

ISBN-10: 0262661829

ISBN-13: 9780262661829

Edition: 2004

Authors: Peter Pesic

List price: $30.00

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Description:

In 1824 a young Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel proved conclusively that algebraic equations of the fifth order are not solvable in radicals. In this book Peter Pesic shows what an important event this was in the history of thought. He also presents it as a remarkable human story. Abel was twenty-one when he self-published his proof, and he died five years later, poor and depressed, just before the proof started to receive wide acclaim. Abel's attempts to reach out to the mathematical elite of the day had been spurned, and he was unable to find a position that would allow him to work in peace and marry his fianceacute;yen;reg; But Pesic's story begins long before Abel and continues to…

Book details

List price: $30.00
Copyright year: 2004
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 2/27/2004
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 222
Size: 5.35" wide x 7.99" long x 0.55" tall
Weight: 0.440
Language: English

Peter Pesic is Tutor and Musician-in-Residence at St. John's College, Santa Fe. He is the author of Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning of Science; Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature; Abel's Proof: An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability; and Sky in a Bottle, all published by the MIT Press.



Introduction



The Scandal of the Irrational



Controversy and Coefficients



Impossibilities and Imaginaries



Spirals and Seashores



Premonitions and Permutations



Abel's Proof



Abel and Galois



Seeing Symmetries



The Order of Things



Solving the Unsolvable



Abel's 1824 Paper



Abel on the General Form of an Algebraic Solution



Cauchy's Theorem on Permutations


Notes


Acknowledgments


Index