Einstein's Italian Mathematicians

Einstein's Italian Mathematicians
Author: Judith R. Goodstein
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2018-07-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1470428466

In the first decade of the twentieth century as Albert Einstein began formulating a revolutionary theory of gravity, the Italian mathematician Gregorio Ricci was entering the later stages of what appeared to be a productive if not particularly memorable career, devoted largely to what his colleagues regarded as the dogged development of a mathematical language he called the absolute differential calculus. In 1912, the work of these two dedicated scientists would intersect—and physics and mathematics would never be the same. Einstein's Italian Mathematicians chronicles the lives and intellectual contributions of Ricci and his brilliant student Tullio Levi-Civita, including letters, interviews, memoranda, and other personal and professional papers, to tell the remarkable, little-known story of how two Italian academicians, of widely divergent backgrounds and temperaments, came to provide the indispensable mathematical foundation—today known as the tensor calculus—for general relativity.

Italian Mathematics Between the Two World Wars

Italian Mathematics Between the Two World Wars
Author: Angelo Guerraggio
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2006-01-20
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3764375124

This book describes Italian mathematics in the period between the two World Wars. It analyzes the development by focusing on both the interior and the external influences. Italian mathematics in that period was shaped by a colorful array of strong personalities who concentrated their efforts on a select number of fields and won international recognition and respect in an incredibly short time. Consequently, Italy was considered a third mathematical power after France and Germany.

The Philosophy and Physics of Noether's Theorems

The Philosophy and Physics of Noether's Theorems
Author: James Read
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2022-09-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1108486231

A centenary volume that celebrates, extends and applies Noether's 1918 theorems with contributions from world-leading researchers.

Einstein

Einstein
Author: Philipp Frank
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2013-08-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307831361

Much has been written about Albert Einstein, technical and biographical, but very little remains as valuable as this unique hybrid of a book written by Einstein’s colleague and contemporary. Both rich in personal insights and grounded in a deep knowledge of twentieth-century science, Phillip Frank's biography anchors the reader with a lucid overview of physics and draws an intimate portrait of the Nobel Prize–winner.

Relativity

Relativity
Author: Albert Einstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691191816

After completing the final version of his general theory of relativity in November 1915, Albert Einstein wrote a book about relativity for a popular audience. This new edition of Einstein's book features an authoritative English translation of the text along with an introduction and a reading companion that examines the evolution of Einstein's thinking and casts his ideas in a broader present-day context. A special chapter explores the history of and the stories behind the early foreign-language editions in light of the reception of relativity in different countries. This edition also includes a survey of the introductions from these editions, covers from selected early editions, a letter from Walther Rathenau to Einstein discussing the book, and a revealing sample from Einstein's handwritten manuscript--

Vector

Vector
Author: Robyn Arianrhod
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2024-05-29
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0226821110

A celebration of the seemingly simple idea that allowed us to imagine the world in new dimensions—sparking both controversy and discovery. The stars of this book, vectors and tensors, are unlikely celebrities. If you ever took a physics course, the word “vector” might remind you of the mathematics needed to determine forces on an amusement park ride, a turbine, or a projectile. You might also remember that a vector is a quantity that has magnitude and (this is the key) direction. In fact, vectors are examples of tensors, which can represent even more data. It sounds simple enough—and yet, as award-winning science writer Robyn Arianrhod shows in this riveting story, the idea of a single symbol expressing more than one thing at once was millennia in the making. And without that idea, we wouldn’t have such a deep understanding of our world. Vector and tensor calculus offers an elegant language for expressing the way things behave in space and time, and Arianrhod shows how this enabled physicists and mathematicians to think in a brand-new way. These include James Clerk Maxwell when he ushered in the wireless electromagnetic age; Einstein when he predicted the curving of space-time and the existence of gravitational waves; Paul Dirac, when he created quantum field theory; and Emmy Noether, when she connected mathematical symmetry and the conservation of energy. For it turned out that it’s not just physical quantities and dimensions that vectors and tensors can represent, but other dimensions and other kinds of information, too. This is why physicists and mathematicians can speak of four-dimensional space-time and other higher-dimensional “spaces,” and why you’re likely relying on vectors or tensors whenever you use digital applications such as search engines, GPS, or your mobile phone. In exploring the evolution of vectors and tensors—and introducing the fascinating people who gave them to us—Arianrhod takes readers on an extraordinary, five-thousand-year journey through the human imagination. She shows the genius required to reimagine the world—and how a clever mathematical construct can dramatically change discovery’s direction.

The Gravity of Math

The Gravity of Math
Author: Steve Nadis
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2024-04-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 154160430X

One of the preeminent mathematicians of the past half century shows how physics and math were combined to give us the theory of gravity and the dizzying array of ideas and insights that has come from it Mathematics is far more than just the language of science. It is a critical underpinning of nature. The famed physicist Albert Einstein demonstrated this in 1915 when he showed that gravity—long considered an attractive force between massive objects—was actually a manifestation of the curvature, or geometry, of space and time. But in making this towering intellectual leap, Einstein needed the help of several mathematicians, including Marcel Grossmann, who introduced him to the geometrical framework upon which his theory rest. In The Gravity of Math, Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau consider how math can drive and sometimes even anticipate discoveries in physics. Examining phenomena like black holes, gravitational waves, and the Big Bang, Nadis and Yau ask: Why do mathematical statements, derived solely from logic, provide the best descriptions of our physical world? The Gravity of Math offers an insightful and compelling look into the power of mathematics—whose reach, like that of gravity, can extend to the edge of the universe.

Making 20th Century Science

Making 20th Century Science
Author: Stephen G. Brush
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2015
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199978158

Historically, the scientific method has been said to require proposing a theory, making a prediction of something not already known, testing the prediction, and giving up the theory (or substantially changing it) if it fails the test. A theory that leads to several successful predictions is more likely to be accepted than one that only explains what is already known but not understood. This process is widely treated as the conventional method of achieving scientific progress, and was used throughout the twentieth century as the standard route to discovery and experimentation. But does science really work this way? In Making 20th Century Science, Stephen G. Brush discusses this question, as it relates to the development of science throughout the last century. Answering this question requires both a philosophically and historically scientific approach, and Brush blends the two in order to take a close look at how scientific methodology has developed. Several cases from the history of modern physical and biological science are examined, including Mendeleev's Periodic Law, Kekule's structure for benzene, the light-quantum hypothesis, quantum mechanics, chromosome theory, and natural selection. In general it is found that theories are accepted for a combination of successful predictions and better explanations of old facts. Making 20th Century Science is a large-scale historical look at the implementation of the scientific method, and how scientific theories come to be accepted.

Model and Mathematics: From the 19th to the 21st Century

Model and Mathematics: From the 19th to the 21st Century
Author: Michael Friedman
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2022-08-08
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3030978338

This open access book collects the historical and medial perspectives of a systematic and epistemological analysis of the complicated, multifaceted relationship between model and mathematics, ranging from, for example, the physical mathematical models of the 19th century to the simulation and digital modelling of the 21st century. The aim of this anthology is to showcase the status of the mathematical model between abstraction and realization, presentation and representation, what is modeled and what models. This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Cultural Studies on Einstein’s Relativity

Cultural Studies on Einstein’s Relativity
Author: Ernst Gehrcke
Publisher: GogLiB
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2022-05-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 8897527590

Why study Einstein’s relativity from a cultural point of view—the theory as well as the universal consensus it receives? On the one hand, every human phenomenon can be looked at from this point of view, but here we are faced with something special: the American magazine Time, which every December dedicates a cover to the “person of the year”, on the latest issue in 1999 named the “person of the century”, and who was this person, if not Einstein? From 1919 in a sensational way, but the signs of the phenomenon began to be observed already around 1910, the author of a theory that is almost impossible to make understandable to those who are not specialists enjoys generalized consensus among specialists and a popularity by the public of the whole world which has remained unchanged until the present. No one expressed this better than Chaplin, once he was acclaimed in public in the company of Einstein: “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.” The little-known contemporary Gehrcke, if we have the patience to follow him, could lead the way to understand something of this. Ernst Gehrcke (1878-1960) was an academic physicist, a good connoisseur of Kant’s philosophy, a technologist of electromagnetism, inventor of instruments for measuring interference, an editor of monumental manuals on optics and radiology, an expert in palaeontology and prehistory (some photographs available on the Internet show him intent on ordering geological samples and lithic finds), and in addition to all this he was the first to think that it was necessary to study relativity from a cultural point of view. In this book we will read his attempts in this direction, which began in 1912, when general relativity did not yet exist, but special relativity had already inflamed with enthusiasm some students and physicists of the new generation, in Germany and beyond.