商品簡介
This popular account of set theory and mathematical logic introduces the reader to modern ideas about infinity and their implications for mathematics.It unifies ideas from set theory and mathematical logic and traces their effects on mainstream mathematical topics of today, such as number theory and combinatorics.The treatment is historical and partly informal, but with due attention to the subtleties of the subject. Ideas are shown to evolve from natural mathematical questions about the nature of infinity and the nature of proof, set against a background of broader questions and developments in mathematics.A particular aim of the book is to acknowledge some important but neglected figures in the history of infinity, such as Post and Gentzen, alongside the recognized giants Cantor and G”del.
作者簡介
John Stillwell, originally from Melbourne, Australia, is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco. He earned his MSc in 1965 from the University of Melbourne and his PhD from MIT in 1970. His writing covers a wide spectrum of mathematics, from translations of classics by Dirichlet, Dedekind, Poincare, and Dehn to books on algebra, geometry, topology, number theory, and their history. He was awarded the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America in 2005 for his expository writing. In 2009 he was awarded the AJCU National Book Award for Yearning for the Impossible: The Surprising Truths of Mathematics. He is also the author of Mathematics and Its History, The Four Pillars of Geometry, and The Elements of Number Theory, among others.
