In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World

344 Pages·2012·3.61 MB·English

by  Ian Stewart

IN PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWN
Also by Ian Stewart:
Concepts of Modern Mathematics
Game, Set, and Math
The Problems of Mathematics
Does God Play Dice?
Another Fine Math You’ve Got Me into
Fearful Symmetry (with Martin Golubitsky)
Nature’s Numbers
From Here to Infinity
The Magical Maze
Life’s Other Secret
Flatterland
What Shape Is a Snowflake?
The Annotated Flatland
Math Hysteria
The Mayor of Uglyville’s Dilemma
Letters to a Young Mathematician
Why Beauty Is Truth
How to Cut a Cake
Taming the Infinite/The Story of Mathematics
Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities
Professor Stewart’s Hoard of Mathematical Treasures
Cows in the Maze
Mathematics of Life
with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen
The Science of Discworld
The Science of Discworld II: the Globe
The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch
with Jack Cohen
The Collapse of Chaos
Figments of Reality
Evolving the Alien/What Does a Martian Look Like?
Wheelers (science fiction)
Heaven (science fiction)
IN PURSUIT OF THE
UNKNOWN
17 Equations
That Changed the World
IAN STEWART
BASIC BOOKS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
Copyright © 2012 by Ian Stewart
Published in the United States in 2012 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Published in Great Britain in 2012 by Profile Books
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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
LCCN: 2011944850
ISBN: 978-0-465-02973-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Why Equations?
1 The squaw on the hippopotamus
Pythagoras’s Theorem

2 Shortening the proceedings
Logarithms

3 Ghosts of departed quantities
Calculus

4 The system of the world
Newton’s Law of Gravity

5 Portent of the ideal world
The Square Root of Minus One

6 Much ado about knotting
Euler’s Formula for Polyhedra

7 Patterns of chance
Normal Distribution

8 Good vibrations
Wave Equation

9 Ripples and blips
Fourier Transform

10 The ascent of humanity
Navier–Stokes Equation

11 Waves in the ether
Maxwell’s Equations

12 Law and disorder
Second Law of Thermodynamics
13 One thing is absolute
Relativity

14 Quantum weirdness
Schrödinger’s Equation

15 Codes, Communications, and computers
Information Theory

16 The imbalance of nature
Chaos Theory

17 The Midas formula
Black-Scholes Equation

Where Next?
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
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Robert Recorde, The Whetstone of Witte, 1557