18 results for "Mathematics"

Our mathematical universe: my quest for the ultimate nature of reality

Tegmark, Max
"Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present, and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and ground-breaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories (his website gives a flavor of how they might boggle the mind), but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last--here is a book for the full science-reading spectrum"--
Alfred A. Knopf 2014 421 pages

The Nature of Mathematical Modeling (Cambridge Series on Information and the Natural Sciences)

Gershenfeld, Neil
This book first covers exact and approximate analytical techniques (ordinary differential and difference equations, partial differential equations, variational principles, stochastic processes); numerical methods (finite differences for ODE's and PDE's, finite elements, cellular automata); model inference based on observations (function fitting, data transforms, network architectures, search techniques, density estimation); as well as the special role of time in modeling (filtering and state estimation, hidden Markov processes, linear and nonlinear time series). Each of the topics in the book would be the worthy subject of a dedicated text, but only by presenting the material in this way is it possible to make so much material accessible to so many people. Each chapter presents a concise summary of the core results in an area, providing an orientation to what they can (and cannot) do, enough background to use them to solve typical problems, and pointers to access the literature for particular applications.
Cambridge University Press 2011-09-30

A project to find the fundamental theory of physics

Wolfram, Stephen
'In many ways it s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that s been done and it's very impressive - we still, after all this time, don t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.' The Wolfram Physics Project is a bold effort to find the fundamental theory of physics. It combines new ideas with the latest research in physics, mathematics and computation in the push to achieve this ultimate goal of science. Written with Stephen Wolfram's characteristic expository flair, this book provides a unique opportunity to learn about a historic initiative in science right as it is happening. A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics includes: The announcement of the project; A technical introduction; A history section that outlines the backstory which led Wolfram to this point; Background information from computational essays published by the author in 2015 and 2017; Foundational information, including historical notes and an excerpt from Wolfram's; 2002 New York Times Best Seller A New Kind of Science; Hundreds of beautiful full-colour visualisations. Stephen Wolfram is a distinguished scientist and best-selling author, and the creator of some of the world's most respected software systems, including Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language. For more than 30 years he has been the CEO of the global technology company Wolfram Research.
Wolfram Media 2020 778 pages

Mathematics for the physical sciences.

Schwartz, Laurent
This exploration of the mathematical methods of physics takes a careful look at mathematical entities and explains their elementary properties. Its examples, drawn from the physical sciences, illustrate the application of concepts. The theory of distributions is introduced early and employed throughout the text. Concise rather than comprehensive, this text states only essential results in its proofs. Topics include preliminary results in the integral calculus, elementary theory of distributions, convolution, Fourier series and the Fourier transform, the Laplace transform, wave and heat conduction equations, the gamma function, and Bessel functions. Prerequisites include a familiarity with linear algebra and functions of a complex variable.
Addison-Wesley 1966 358 pages

Green's functions and boundary value problems

Stakgold, Ivar
"This Third Edition includes basic modern tools of computational mathematics for boundary value problems and also provides the foundational mathematical material necssary to understand and use the tools. Central to the text is a down-to-earth approach that shows readers how to use differential and integral equations when tackling significant problems in the physical sciences, engineering, and applied mathematics, and the book maintains a careful balance between sound mathematics and meaningful applications. A new co-author, Michael J. Holst, has been added to this new edition, and together he and Ivar Stakgold incorporate recent developments that have altered the field of applied mathematics, particularly in the areas of approximation methods and theory including best linear approximation in linear spaces; interpolation of functions in Sobolev Spaces; spectral, finite volume, and finite difference methods; techniques of nonlinear approximation; and Petrov-Galerkin and Galerkin methods for linear equations. Additional topics have been added including weak derivatives and Sobolev Spaces, linear functionals, energy methods and A Priori estimates, fixed-point techniques, and critical and super-critical exponent problems. The authors have revised the complete book to ensure that the notation throughout remained consistent and clear as well as adding new and updated references. Discussions on modeling, Fourier analysis, fixed-point theorems, inverse problems, asymptotics, and nonlinear methods have also been updated"--
Wiley 2011-02-08 855 pages

The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem

Steiner, Mark
This book analyzes the different ways mathematics is applicable in the physical sciences, and presents a startling thesis--the success of mathematical physics appears to assign the human mind a special place in the cosmos. Mark Steiner distinguishes among the semantic problems that arise from the use of mathematics in logical deduction; the metaphysical problems that arise from the alleged gap between mathematical objects and the physical world; the descriptive problems that arise from the use of mathematics to describe nature; and the epistemological problems that arise from the use of mathematics to discover those very descriptions. The epistemological problems lead to the thesis about the mind. It is frequently claimed that the universe is indifferent to human goals and values, and therefore, Locke and Peirce, for example, doubted science's ability to discover the laws governing the humanly unobservable. Steiner argues that, on the contrary, these laws were discovered, using manmade mathematical analogies, resulting in an anthropocentric picture of the universe as "user friendly" to human cognition--a challenge to the entrenched dogma of naturalism.
Harvard University Press 1998-11-20 215 pages

Clifford Numbers and Spinors

Riesz, Marcel
Preface; E. Folke Bolinder. Lecture Series Clifford Numbers and Spinors given by Professor Marcel Riesz, October 1957--January 1958. Preface. I. Clifford Numbers. II. Rotations and Reflections. III. Canonical Representations of Isometrics. IV. Representation of Isometrics by Infinitesimal Transformation and Clifford Bivectors. Bibliography. Index. Errata to Clifford Numbers and Spinors. Marcel Riesz's Lecture Notes on Clifford Algebra dictated to E. Folke Bolinder, April 1959. Marcel Riesz's Work on Clifford Algebras; P. Lounesto.
Springer 2014-03-14 256 pages

Boundary value problems of mathematical physics

Stakgold, Ivar
For more than 30 years, this two-volume set has helped prepare graduate students to use partial differential equations and integral equations to handle significant problems arising in applied mathematics, engineering, and the physical sciences. Originally published in 1967, this graduate-level introduction is devoted to the mathematics needed for the modern approach to boundary value problems using Green's functions and using eigenvalue expansions. Now a part of SIAM's Classics series, these volumes contain a large number of concrete, interesting examples of boundary value problems for partial differential equations that cover a variety of applications that are still relevant today. For example, there is substantial treatment of the Helmholtz equation and scattering theory?subjects that play a central role in contemporary inverse problems in acoustics and electromagnetic theory.
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics 2000-06-30 760 pages

Representation Theory and Complex Geometry

Ginzburg, Victor
see attached] This second edition of {it Representation Theory and Complex Geometry} provides an overview of significant advances in representation theory from a geometric standpoint. A geometrically-oriented treatment has long been desired, especially since the discovery of { l D}-modules in the early '80s and the quiver approach to quantum groups in the early '90s. The first half of the book fills the gap between the standard knowledge of a beginner in Lie theory and the much wider background needed by the working mathematician. Thus, Chapters 1-3 and 5-6 provide some basics in symplectic geometry, Borel--Moore homology, the geometry of semisimple groups, equivariant algebraic K-theory "from scratch," and the topology and algebraic geometry of flag varieties and conjugacy classes, respectively. The material covered by Chapters 5 and 6, as well as most of Chapter 3, has never been presented in book form. Chapters 3-4 and 7-8 present a uniform approach to representation theory of three quite different Weyl groups, Lie algebra sln, and the Iwahori--Hecke algebra. The results of Chapters 4 and 8, with complete proofs are not to be found elsewhere in the literature. This second edition contains substantial updates and revisions to include more standard classical results in chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6 as well as two new chapters. Chapter 9 treats the applications of { l D}-modules to Lie groups, and includes the study of * Differential operators on a semisimple group and on its flag manifold; * the famous Beilinson--Bernstein Localization Theorem reducing the study of {it g}-modules to that of { l D} modules; * the so-called Harish--Chandra holonomic system. Chapter 10 isdevoted to some very exciting developments connecting the representations of quantum groups to the geometry of "quiver varieties," introduced by Lusztig and Nakajima. The subject is closely related to many other important topics such as the McKay correspondence, semismall resolutions and Hilbert schemes. Overall, this chapter puts the representation theory of Kac--Moody algebras and quantum groups in this broader context. The exposition is practically self-contained with each chapter potentially serving as a basis for a graduate course or seminar. An excellent glossary of notation, comprehensive bibliography and extensive index round out this new edition. The techniques developed here play an essential role in the development of the Langlands program and can be successfully applied to representation theory, quantum groups and quantum field theory, affine Lie algebras, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics.
Birkhäuser Boston 2007-05 680 pages

Methods of Modern Mathematical Physics Scattering theory

Michael Reed,Barry Simon
Scattering theory is the study of an interacting system on a scale of time and/or distance which is large compared to the scale of the interaction itself. As such, it is the most effective means, sometimes the only means, to study microscopic nature. To understand the importance of scattering theory, consider the variety of ways in which it arises. First, there are various phenomena in nature (like the blue of the sky) which are the result of scattering. In order to understand the phenomenon (and to identify it as the result of scattering) one must understand the underlying dynamics and its scattering theory. Second, one often wants to use the scattering of waves or particles whose dynamics on knows to determine the structure and position of small or inaccessible objects. For example, in x-ray crystallography (which led to the discovery of DNA), tomography, and the detection of underwater objects by sonar, the underlying dynamics is well understood. What one would like to construct are correspondences that link, via the dynamics, the position, shape, and internal structure of the object to the scattering data. Ideally, the correspondence should be an explicit formula which allows one to reconstruct, at least approximately, the object from the scattering data. The main test of any proposed particle dynamics is whether one can construct for the dynamics a scattering theory that predicts the observed experimental data. Scattering theory was not always so central the physics. Even thought the Coulomb cross section could have been computed by Newton, had he bothered to ask the right question, its calculation is generally attributed to Rutherford more than two hundred years later. Of course, Rutherford's calculation was in connection with the first experiment in nuclear physics.
Academic Press a division of Harcourt Brace 2023 480 pages

Integral Operators in the Theory of Linear Partial Differential Equations

Bergman, Stefan
The present book deals with the construction of solutions of linear partial differential equations by means of integral operators which transform analytic functions of a complex variable into such solutions. The theory of analytic functions has achieved a high degree of deve lopment and simplicity, and the operator method permits us to exploit this theory in the study of differential equations. Although the study of existence and uniqueness of solutions has been highly developed, much less attention has been paid to the investigation of function theo retical properties and to the explicit construction of regular and singular solutions using a unified general procedure. This book attempts to fill in the gap in this direction. Integral operators of various types have been used for a long time in the mathematical literature. In this connection one needs only to mention Euler and Laplace. The author has not attempted to give a complete account of all known operators, but rather has aimed at developing a unified approach. For this purpose he uses special operators which preserve various function theoretical properties of analytic functions, such as domains of regularity, validity of series development, connection between the coefficients of these developments and location and character of singularities, etc. However, all efforts were made to give a complete bibliography to help the reader to find more detailed information.
Springer 2014-10-09 156 pages

David Hilbert and the Axiomatization of Physics (1898-1918): From Grundlagen der Geometrie to Grundlagen der Physik

Corry, L.
Preface. Acknowledgements and Credits. Introduction. 1: Late Nineteenth Century Background. 1.1. Hilbert's Early Career. 1.1.1 Algebraic Invariants. 1.1.2 Algebraic Number Fields. 1.1.3 Deep Roots in Tradition. 1.2. Foundations of Geometry. 1.2.1 Riemann. 1.2.2 Projective Geometry. 1.2.3 Nineteenth-Century Axiomatics. 1.2.4 Pasch and the Italian School. 1.3. Foundations of Physics. 1.3.1 Kinetic Theory, Mechanistic Foundations. 1.3.2 Carl Neumann. 1.3.3 Heinrich Hertz. 1.3.4 Paul Volkmann. 1.3.5 Ludwig Boltzmann. 1.3.6 Aurel Voss. 1.4. Mathematics and Physics in Göttingen at the Turn of the Century. 1.4.1 Felix Klein. 1.4.2 The Physicists. 2: Axiomatization in Hilbert's Early Career. 2.1. Axiomatics, Geometry and Physics in Hilbert's Early Lectures. 2.1.1 Geometry in Königsberg. 2.1.2 Geometry in Göttingen. 2.1.3 Mechanics in Göttingen. 2.2. Grundlagen der Geometrie. 2.2.1 Independence, Simplicity, Completeness. 2.2.2 Fundamental Theorems of Projective Geometry. 2.2.3 On the Concept of Number. 2.3. The 1900 List of Problems. 2.3.1 Foundational Problems. 2.3.2 A Context for the Sixth Problem. 2.4. Early Reactions to the Grundlagen. 3: The Axiomatic Method in Action: 1900-1905. 3.1. Foundational Concerns - Empiricist Standpoint. 3.2. Hilbert and Physics in Göttingen circa 1905. 3.3. Axioms for Physical Theories: Hilbert's 1905 Lectures. 3.3.1 Mechanics. 3.3.2 Thermodynamics. 3.3.3 Probability Calculus. 3.3.4 Kinetic Theory of Gases. 3.3.5 Insurance Mathematics. 3.3.6 Electrodynamics. 3.3.7 Psychophysics. 3.3.8 A post-1909 addendum. 3.4. The Axiomatization Program by 1905 - Partial Summary. 4: Minkowski and Relativity: 1907-1909. 4.1. The Principle of Relativity. 4.2. The Basic Equations of Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies. 4.2.1 Three Meanings of 'Relativity'. 4.2.2 Axioms of Electrodynamics. 4.2.3 Relativity and Mechanics. 4.2.4 Relativity and Gravitation. 4.3. Space and Time. 4.3.1 Groups of Transformations. 4.3.2 EmpiricalConsiderations. 4.3.3 Relativity and Existing Physical Theories. 4.4. Max Born, Relativity, and the Theories of the Electron. 4.4.1 Rigid Bodies. 4.5. Minkowski, Axiomatics and Relativity - Summary. 5: Mechanical to Electromagnetic Reductionism: 1910-1914. 5.1. Lectures on Mechanics and Continuum Mechanics. 5.2. Kinetic Theory. 5.3. Radiation Theory. 5.3.1 Hilbert and Kirchhoff's Law: 1912. 5.3.2 Reactions and Sequels: Early 1913. 5.3.3 Pringsheim's Criticism: 1913. 5.3.4 Hilbert's Final Version: 1914. 5.3.5 Kinetic and Radiation Theory: General Remarks. 5.4. Structure of Matter and Relativity: 1912-1914. 5.4.1 Molecular Theory of Matter - 1912-13. 5.4.2 Electron Theory: 1913. 5.4.3 Axiomatization of Physics: 1913. 5.4.4 Electromagnetic Oscillations: 1913-14. 5.5. Broadening Physical Horizons - Concluding Remarks. 6: Einstein and Mie: Two Pillars of Hilbert's Unified Theory. 6.1. Einstein's Way to General Relativity. 6.2. Mie's Electromagnetic Theory of Matter. 6.2.1 First and Second Installment: Early 1912. 6.2.2 Third Installment: November 1912. 6.3. Contemporary Debates on Gravitation. 6.4. Born's Formulation of Mie's Theory. 6.5. The Background to Hilbert's Unified Theory - Summary. 7: Foundations of Physics: 1915-1916. 7.1. Einstein in Göttingen - Summer of 1915. 7.2. Hilbert's Unified Theory - General Considerations. 7.3. Hilbert's Communication to the GWG - November 1915. 7.3.1 Axioms and Basic Assumptions. 7.3.2 The Hamiltonian Function and the Field Equations. 7.3.3 Summary and Additional Considerations. 7.4. The Hilbert-Einstein Correspondence and Einstein's Four Communications - November 1915. 7.5. Hilbert's Unified Theory: First Printed Version - March 1916. 7.6. Foundations of Physics - Summary. 8: Hilbert and GTR: 1916-1918. 8.1. Mie's Reaction. 8.2. Einstein's Reaction. 8.3. Hilbert Teaches GTR - 1916-1917. 8.4. Hilbert's Second Communication - December 1916. 8.5. Göttingen Debates on Energy
Springer 2014-03-14 532 pages

Supermanifolds

DeWitt, Bryce S.
This is an updated and expanded second edition of a successful and well-reviewed text presenting a detailed exposition of the modern theory of supermanifolds, including a rigorous account of the super-analogs of all the basic structures of ordinary manifold theory. The exposition opens with the theory of analysis over supernumbers (Grassman variables), Berezin integration, supervector spaces and the superdeterminant. This basic material is then applied to the theory of supermanifolds, with an account of super-analogs of Lie derivatives, connections, metric, curvature, geodesics, Killing flows, conformal groups, etc. The book goes on to discuss the theory of super Lie groups, super Lie algebras, and invariant geometrical structures on coset spaces. Complete descriptions are given of all the simple super Lie groups. The book then turns to applications. Chapter 5 contains an account of the Peierals bracket for superclassical dynamical systems, super Hilbert spaces, path integration for fermionic quantum systems, and simple models of Bose-Fermi supersymmetry. The sixth and final chapter, which is new in this revised edition, examines dynamical systems for which the topology of the configuration supermanifold is important. A concise but complete account is given of the pathintegral derivation of the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet formula for the Euler-Poincaré characteristic of an ordinary manifold, which is based on a simple extension of a point particle moving freely in this manifold to a supersymmetric dynamical system moving in an associated supermanifold. Many exercises are included to complement the text.
Cambridge University Press 1992-05-28 407 pages

On the Kinetic Theory of Steady Gas Flows

Lawrence Sirovich
"On the Kinetic Theory of Steady Gas Flows" explores the theoretical underpinnings of gas dynamics through the lens of kinetic theory. This work delves into the mathematical and physical principles governing the behavior of gases in motion, offering insights into steady-state flows. It is invaluable for researchers and students in physics, engineering, and applied mathematics interested in a rigorous treatment of gas dynamics from a kinetic perspective. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2025-05-22 82 pages