Selecta

This book results from a unique and innovative program at Pennsylvania State University. Under the program, the ''best of the best'' students nationwide are chosen to study challenging mathematical areas under the guidance of experienced mathematicians. This program, Mathematics Advanced Study Semesters (MASS), offers an unparalleled opportunity for talented undergraduate students who are serious in the pursuit of mathematical knowledge. This volume represents various aspects of the MASS program over its six-year existence, including core courses, summer courses, students' research, and colloquium talks. The book is most appropriate for college professors of mathematics who work with bright and eager undergraduate and beginning graduate students, for such students who want to expand their mathematical horizons, and for everyone who loves mathematics and wants to learn more interesting and unusual material. The first half of the book contains lecture notes of nonstandard courses. A text for a semester-long course on $p$-adic analysis is centered around contrasts and similarities with its real counterpart. A shorter text focuses on a classical area of interplay between geometry, algebra and number theory (continued fractions, hyperbolic geometry and quadratic forms). Also provided are detailed descriptions of two innovative courses, one on geometry and the other on classical mechanics. These notes constitute what one may call the skeleton of a course, leaving the instructor ample room for innovation and improvisation. The second half of the book contains a large collection of essays on a broad spectrum of exciting topics from Hilbert's Fourth Problem to geometric inequalities and minimal surfaces, from mathematical billiards to fractals and tilings, from unprovable theorems to the classification of finite simple groups and lexicographic codes.

Fated love? A destiny in the stars? Together for all eternity? It doesn’t work like that. At least not without a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind the scenes where the Soul Selector spins her magical trickery. It is her job is to identify soul mates as they enter this world and somehow get them to fall in love. Aphrodite and all the other gods need this purest love of all. They feed on it.But soul mates are notoriously difficult to work with, and the Soul Selector has just found a particularly stupid pair.

Masatoshi Fukushima is one of the most influential probabilists of our times. His fundamental work on Dirichlet forms and Markov processes made Hilbert space methods a tool in stochastic analysis and by this he opened the way to several new developments. His impact on a new generation of probabilists can hardly be overstated. These Selecta collect 25 of Fukushima's seminal articles published between 1967 and 2007.

This volume contains translated articles originally published from 1970 to 1990 in the Russian journal "Kvant." The influence of this magazine on mathematics and physics education in Russia is unmatched. This volume initiates a collection that represents the Russian tradition of expository mathematical writing at its best. Written by leading Russian mathematicians and expositors, these articles present mathematics in a conceptual, entertaining, and accessible way. This volume is designed for students and teachers who love mathematics, and can expand on local school curriculum subjects. This first volume addresses various topics in number theory.

Although today Luis Palés Matos is virtually unknown to most American readers, the eminent U.S. poet and writer William Carlos Williams once praised his younger contemporary as "one of the most important poets out of Latin America." Palés Matos was a native, and lifelong resident, of Puerto Rico. Though he was not black, he became one of the Caribbeans leading advocates of poesía negra (black poetry). His landmark 1937 collection Tuntún de Pasa y Grifería: Poesía Afro-Antillana (Tom-Tom of Kinky Hair and Black Things: Afro-Caribbean Poetry) joyously celebrated the African aspects and sources of Puerto Ricos culture and influenced later generations of writers throughout the Western hemisphere. Translator Julio Marzán has selected the best of Palés Matoss poems from throughout his career, among them "Prelude in Boricua," "Danza Negra," "Buccaneer Winds," and "Elegy on the Duke of Marmalade." He also provides a helpful glossary of obscure terms and an introduction that locates Palés Matos in the broader cultural context of his contemporaries and poetic influences including such North American poets as Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vachel Lindsay.