Today complex numbers have such widespread practical use--from electrical engineering to aeronautics--that few people would expect the story behind their derivation to be filled with adventure and enigma. In An Imaginary Tale, Paul Nahin tells the...

The essential textbook for learning game theory strategiesGame Theory in Action is a textbook about using game theory across a range of real-life scenarios. From traffic accidents to the sex lives of lizards, Stephen Schecter and Herbert Gintis show...

On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in then Soviet Ukraine. More than 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone, not to mention many citizens of surrounding countries, are still suffering the effects. Life Exposed is the...

The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious...

From 1900 to 1924 Spain experienced a stage of vigorous academic freedom and unfettered scientific inquiry that strikingly contrasted with the repressive atmosphere of the periods before and after. Thomas Glick explores this "recovery of science" by...

How do scientists develop new explanations of disease? How do those explanations become accepted as true? And how does medical diagnosis change when physicians are confronted with new scientific evidence? These are some of the questions that Paul Thagard...

Winner of the Ida and Studs Terkel Prize "A brilliant account" of the controversial 2005 legal battle between evolution and creationism in public education "by a first-rate journalist" (Howard Zinn). In 2004, the School Board of Dover, Pennsylvania,...

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of...

A concise introduction to statistical mechanicsStatistical mechanics is one of the most exciting areas of physics today, and it also has applications to subjects as diverse as economics, social behavior, algorithmic theory, and evolutionary biology...

The traditional debate among philosophers of mathematics is whether there is an external mathematical reality, something out there to be discovered, or whether mathematics is the product of the human mind. This provocative book, now available in a...

From Galileo's analysis of motion to the theories of evolution and relativity, Charles Gillispie takes us on a masterly tour of the world of scientific ideas. The history of modern science is portrayed here as the development of objectivity through the...

From classical mechanics to general relativity, the key principles in all areas of physics are surveyed in this one handy volume. Here Alan Tribble addresses the needs of students and practicing physicists alike. He starts with a review of mathematical...

Providing an introduction to mathematical analysis as it applies to economic theory and econometrics, this book bridges the gap that has separated the teaching of basic mathematics for economics and the increasingly advanced mathematics demanded in...

When first published in 2005, Matrix Mathematics quickly became the essential reference book for users of matrices in all branches of engineering, science, and applied mathematics. In this fully updated and expanded edition, the author brings together...

Power, Speed, and Form is the first accessible account of the engineering behind eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939—the telephone, electric power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, radio, the...