Mathematical Circus

Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games columns in Scientific American inspired and entertained several generations of mathematicians and scientists. Gardner in his crystal-clear prose illuminated corners of mathematics, especially recreational mathematics, that most people had no idea existed. His playful spirit and inquisitive nature invite the reader into an exploration of beautiful mathematical ideas along with him. These columns were both a revelation and a gift when he wrote them; no one--before Gardner--had written about mathematics like this. They continue to be a marvel. This volume, first published in 1979, contains columns published in the magazine from 1968-1971. This 1992 MAA edition contains a foreword by Donald Knuth and a postscript and extended bibliography added by Gardner for this edition.

Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games columns in Scientific American inspired and entertained several generations of mathematicians and scientists. Gardner in his crystal-clear prose illuminated corners of mathematics, especially recreational mathematics, that most people had no idea existed. His playful spirit and inquisitive nature invite the reader into an exploration of beautiful mathematical ideas along with him. These columns were both a revelation and a gift when he wrote them; no one--before Gardner--had written about mathematics like this. They continue to be a marvel. This volume, first published in 1975, contains columns published in the magazine from 1965-1967. This 1989 MAA edition contains a foreword by John H. Conway and a postscript and extended bibliography added by Gardner for this edition.

Contains 500 problems ranging over a wide spectrum of mathematics and of levels of difficulty.

Sophie Germain overcame gender stigmas and a lack of formal education to prove that for all prime exponents less than 100 Case I of Fermat's Last Theorem holds. Hidden behind a man's name, her brilliance as mathematician was first discovered by three of the greatest scholars of the eighteenth century, Lagrange, Gauss, and Legendre. In Sophie's Diary, Germain comes to life through a fictionalized journal that intertwines mathematics with historical descriptions of the brutal events that took place in Paris between 1789 and 1793. This format provides a plausible perspective of how a young Sophie could have learned mathematics on her own—both fascinated by numbers and eager to master tough subjects without a teacher's guidance. Her passion for mathematics is integrated into her personal life as an escape from societal outrage. Sophie's Diary is suitable for a variety of readers—both young and old, mathematicians and novices—who will be inspired and enlightened on a field of study made easy, as told through the intellectual and personal struggles of an exceptional young woman.

Collected articles on mathematics from the popular Math treks column; extra web support available.

This revised edition of a mathematical classic originally published in 1957 will bring to a new generation of students the enjoyment of investigating that simplest of mathematical figures, the circle. The author has supplemented this new edition with a special chapter designed to introduce readers to the vocabulary of circle concepts with which the readers of two generations ago were familiar. Readers of Circles need only be armed with paper, pencil, compass, and straight edge to find great pleasure in following the constructions and theorems. Those who think that geometry using Euclidean tools died out with the ancient Greeks will be pleasantly surprised to learn many interesting results which were only discovered in modern times. Novices and experts alike will find much to enlighten them in chapters dealing with the representation of a circle by a point in three-space, a model for non-Euclidean geometry, and the isoperimetric property of the circle.