Hesiod's Anvil：Falling and Spinning through Heaven and Earth

How could Dante's imaginary model of the earth imply the existence of a black hole at its core? How did Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, decide the universe was the length a hammer would fall in nine days? Simoson (King College) finds such questions fascinating and intends to make students with a year or so of calculus in their heads to feel the same. He calls upon all the muses and much that is amusing to describe how artists and writers perceived the movements of the heavens and physical phenomena, and accounts for such topics as space travel and habitation, and perceptions of space-time or even just plain old space and time. Simoson also retrieves the venerable H.G. Wells from time to time, falls through the various images of earth, and scans some beautiful curves. Written as an enrichment text, it also serves as inspiration for honors projects. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrew J. Simoson was born in Minnesota, taught American red Cross life-saving on the city beach of Escanaba on Lake Michigan for three summers, earned a BS in mathematics from oral Roberts University in 1975, and PhD in mathematics under Leonard Asimow at the University of Wyoming in 1979, working on extensions of separating theorems in functional analysis. Since then, he has been chairman of the mathematics department at King College in Bristol, Tennessee, and has authored over thirty papers in various mathematical journals, seven of them being joint research with undergraduates. The paper, “The Gravity of Hades,” which is essentially Chapter II of this text, won the Chauvenet Prize for expository writing in 2007. He has twice been a Fulbright professor, at the University of Botswana, 1990-91, and at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, 1997-98. Having two sons, he was a long-time Cub Scout den leader, building model rockets, making marionettes and directing skits, leading camping and canoeing expeditions. He has also been a long-time youth soccer coach, and refereed many games. He and his wife regularly teach a college ballroom dance class each spring term. He is currently a member f the MAA and is an editorial board member of Primus, a journal on undergraduate mathematics teaching.