Saturday, 22 September 2007

Are there other nice math books close to the style of Tristan Needham?

If I may add my two cents, I would add two more books that are an integral part of my library, and which I have presently lent to a gifted middle school student. One is the 'shape of space' by Jeff Weeks, and the other is 'Symmetry of things' by John Conway



Jeff Week's book is an incredibly enjoyable account of the topology of 3-manifolds. I came across someone mentioning the late Bill Thurston's book in this post. While Thurston's book is definitely more rigorous, I would say that Week's book is an overlooked classic. His invitation to experiment with intuition to extrapolate to the abstract, and tying in a theoretician's mental forays with cosmological measurements is quite an eye-opener.



John Conway's book, on the other hand, while it showcases some ideas of symmetry through the work of some artists like Bathsheba Grossman, is largely about abstraction. It is a major work, the latter part technical enough to challenge and inspire mathematicians on the forefront of their field (in his words, not mine!).

No comments:

Post a Comment