Mathematical Perspectives

Mathematical Perspectives: Essays on Mathematics and its Historical Development is a collection of 13 biographical essays on the historical advances of science. This collection is originally meant to comprise an issue of the journal Historia Mathematica in honor of Professor Kurt R. Biermann's 60th birthday. This 12-chapter text includes essays on studies and commentaries on the problem of "e;figures of equal perimeter by various authors in antiquity, including Zenodorus, Theon, and Pappus. Other essays explore the comparison of the areas of polygons with equal perimeter; the concept of function; history of mathematics; the development of mathematical physics in France; and the history of Logicism and Formalism. The remaining chapters deal with essays on an early version of Gauss' Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, ideal numbers, a mathematical-philosophilica theory of probability, and historical examples of problem of number sequence interpolation. This book will be of value to mathematicians, historians, and researchers.