Mathematical Encounters of the Second Kind 1997th Edition by Philip J. Davis (PDF)

Description

A number of years ago, Harriet Sheridan, then Dean of Brown University, organized a series oflectures in which individual faculty members described how it came about that they entered their various fields. I was invited to participate in this series and found in the invitation an opportunity to recall events going back to my early teens. The lecture was well received and its reception encouraged me to work up an expanded version. My manuscript lay dormant all these years. In the meanwhile, sufficiently many other mathematical experiences and encounters accumulated to make this little book. My 1981 lecture is the basis of the first piece: “Napoleon’s Theorem. ” Although there is a connection between the first piece and the second, the four pieces here are essentially independent. The sec­ ond piece, “Carpenter and the Napoleon Ascription,” has as its object a full description of a certain type of scholar-storyteller (of whom I have known and admired several). It is a pastiche, contain­ ing a salad bar selection blended together by my own imagination. This piece purports, as a secondary goal, to present a solution to a certain unsolved historical problem raised in the first piece. The third piece, “The Man Who Began His Lectures with ‘Namely’,” is a short reminiscence of Stefan Bergman, one of my teachers of graduate mathematics. Bergman, a remarkable person­ ality, was born in Poland and came to the United States in 1939.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book is rather unique. I honestly picked it up mostly because of the name. I feel like it is more in the 4.5 star category, but it was fun enough that I will award it 5 stars. The book is a bunch of stories given by the author about essentially three topics. A geometric theorem, a professor, and an English Lord. There is math involved, but one could skip most of it without losing any threads in the stories.The stories are told entertainingly, although the tone and style is rather interesting. I didn’t mind it, but your mileage may vary. The stories vary from completely believable to “what?”. For the most part it seems to be a biographical retelling, but the part on Carpenter’s escapade in Bulghuristan is so strange that I wonder if it even could be true.I honestly don’t know who I would recommend this to. If you want a bunch of semi-interesting tales tangentially related to math, but exploring some interesting people the author has met and befriended, this is a good entry. I had fun reading it, and I wanted to finish the stories to see what happened.

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