Mathematics & Science Books

In the nineteenth century, science and technology developed a close and continuing relationship. The most important advancements in physics -- the science of energy and the theory of the electromagnetic field -- were deeply rooted in the new technologies...

Ever wonder how many kinds of turtles there are? Or if they have teeth? Why so many turtles have yellow stripes on their neck? If it is wise to feed turtles in your neighborhood pond or lake? Whit Gibbons and Judy Greene, two internationally known turtle...

The rare and endangered Chinese alligator has long held a prominent place in Chinese culture and mythology. Here John Thorbjarnarson and Xiaoming Wang, who have been at the forefront of efforts to conserve these remarkable creatures, provide...

Mammalian pheromones, audiomones, visuomones, and snarks - Richard Doty argues that they all belong in the same category: objects of imagination.For more than 50 years researchers - including many prominent scientists - have identified pheromones as the...

Nothing is quite as thrilling as watching superior athletes do the seemingly impossible. From Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass to Lance Armstrong's record—breaking climb of Alp d'Huez to David Beckham's astounding ability to bend a soccer kick, we marvel and...

Nothing is quite as thrilling as watching superior athletes do the seemingly impossible. From Doug Flutie's ''Hail Mary'' pass to Lance Armstrong's record—breaking climb of Alp d'Huez to David Beckham's astounding ability to bend a soccer kick, we marvel...

Technological choices depend on, and are part of, contests over political power, as the history of mass transit vividly illustrates. From horse—drawn omnibuses to subways to light rail, this volume highlights the technological and social struggles that...

In the nineteenth century, the new field of medical bacteriology identified microorganisms and explained how they spread disease. This book interweaves the history of this discipline and the biography of one of its founders, Nobel Prize–winning German...

The printed book is one of life's most frequently encountered technologies. Historian Nicole Howard provides a comprehensive survey of the evolution of this technology, tracing its development across many centuries and cultures.No other technology in...

Patrick M. Malone demonstrates how innovative engineering helped make Lowell, Massachusetts, a potent symbol of American industrial prowess in the 19th century. Waterpower spurred the industrialization of the early United States and was the principal...

Just who was the Przewalski after whom Przewalski's horse was named? Or Husson, the eponym for the rat Hydromys hussoni? Or the Geoffroy whose name is forever linked to Geoffroy's cat? This unique reference provides a brief look at the real lives behind...

What is the maximum number of pizza slices one can get by making four straight cuts through a circular pizza? How does a computer determine the best set of pixels to represent a straight line on a computer screen? How many people at a minimum does it...

From sexist jokes about women drivers to such empowering icons as Amelia Earhart and Rosie the Riveter, representations of the relationship between women and modern technology in popular culture have been both demeaning and celebratory. Depictions of...

Physicists use ''back-of-the-envelope'' estimates to check whether or not an idea could possibly be right. In many cases, the approximate solution is all that is needed. This compilation of 101 examples of back-of-the-envelope calculations celebrates a...

How we arrived at a capacity for taking cold, hard looks at the facts of nature—and whether we ever truly have done so—are questions that continue to engage both historians of science and students of culture. Historians of modern European intellectual...

Like many apparently simple devices, the vertical water wheel has been around for so long that it is taken for granted. Yet this ''picturesque artifact'' was for centuries man's primary mechanical source of power and was the foundation upon which mills...

Laundries were once ubiquitous in British and American cities–products of the same historical process that created steel mills and railroads. Unlike the more familiar examples of industrialization, these cleanliness factories remained powerfully...

Searching for a ''rational'' workplace, turn-of-the-century engineers and industrial architects recast the factory itself in the image of the machine. Indeed, they considered the factory building the ''master machine,'' containing and coordinating all of...

In the nineteenth century, philology–especially comparative philology–made impressive gains as a discipline, thus laying the foundation for the modern field of linguistics. In Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, Stephen G. Alter examines how comparative...

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics--forerunner of today's NASA--emerged in 1915, when airplanes were curiosities made of wood and canvas and held together with yards of baling wire. At the time an unusual example of government intrusion (and...

For two centuries the barometer has been an indispensable laboratory instrument. Yet, despite its revolutionary influence on science, W. E. Knowles Middleton here offers the first complete history of the barometer as a scientific tool. Middleton relies...

This history of the thermometer includes controversy about its invention, the story of different scales, Fahrenheit and centigrade, and the history of the gradual scientific then popular understanding of the concept of temperature. Not until 1800 did...

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick unveiled the double helix structure of DNA. The discovery was a profound moment in the history of science, but solving the structure of the genetic material did not reveal what the human genome sequence actually...

From about 1600 to 1800 scientists and mariners made increasingly sophisticated attempts to understand the earth's magnetic field and use it in navigation. Europeans had long understood the difference between magnetic and true north, but why did it vary...

From the cubit used by Noah to build the ark to the angstrom in spectroscopy, units of measure have been integral to science and engineering. Throughout history, countless systems of measurement have been devised and then discarded as more precise and...

Although fertility drugs are increasing the incidence of twin births, conjoined twins remain rare at about 1 in 75,000 births. Nonetheless, they present a unique opportunity to learn about human development, as well as a challenge to medical...

In Algebra of Probable Inference, Richard T. Cox develops and demonstrates that probability theory is the only theory of inductive inference that abides by logical consistency. Cox does so through a functional derivation of probability theory as the...

Primarily intended for research mathematicians and computer scientists, Combinatorics and Partially Ordered Sets: Dimension Theory also serves as a useful text for advanced students in either field. William Trotter concentrates on combinatorial topics...

The fifth volume of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison covers Edison's invention and development of the first commercial incandescent electric light and power system. In the process he turned his famed Menlo Park laboratory into the first true research and...

''A splendid book . . . Rossiter's tone in recounting [the struggle of women scientists] is never strident. A clear enough case emerges from the sources that she skillfully weaves into a tapestry of social trends and individual experience.''–New York...

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a radical change occurred in the patterns and the framework of European thought. In the wake of discoveries through the telescope and Copernican theory, the notion of an ordered cosmos of 'fixed stars' gave...

Published to commemorate the centennial of the publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species', this volume brings together several important essays on the history of the idea of evolution. Included are discussions of Maupertuis, Buffon, Diderot, Kant,...

Paul Erdos was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in...

This collection of essays by students, colleagues and admirers of Charles Hard Townes - who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964 - seeks to reflect his wide interests and influence, ranging from quantum optics to astrophysics, and from electrical...

Probability Theory: A Primer intends to give a non-technical introduction to probability theory, as it is used in the social sciences. The topics covered include the concept of probability and its relation to relative frequency, the properties of...

Correlation and Regression 2nd edition attempts to take statistical theory in correlation and regression and make it accessible to readers using words, equations, and a variety of applied examples.The examples help explain how the techniques work and...

Correlation and Regression 2nd edition attempts to take statistical theory in correlation and regression and make it accessible to readers using words, equations, and a variety of applied examples.The examples help explain how the techniques work and...

Correlation and Regression 2nd edition attempts to take statistical theory in correlation and regression and make it accessible to readers using words, equations, and a variety of applied examples.The examples help explain how the techniques work and...

First published in 1991 and reprinted in 1994 and 1998, Mid-Latitude Weather Systems has become a classic text in synoptic meteorology. It is the first text to make extensive use of conventional weather charts and equations to illustrate fully the...

Set theory is the primary mechanism for ideological and theoretical unification in modern mathematics. By offering a clear statement of basic questions and problems in this volume, Stephen Pollard aims to make the study of the philosophy of set theory...

The nineteenth century produced scientific and cultural revolutions that forever transformed modern European life. Although these critical developments are often studied independently, Richard G. Olson's Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-Century Europe...

This book aims to detect, critically correlate and properly assess the state of the art in the mechanical behaviour study for nanostructured materials material in the perspective of atomic scale simulation of deformation process. It provides...

Meet some of the world's most dastardly creatures, who lie, cheat and deceive for a living.There's the deadly praying mantis that looks like an innocent pink flower. The assassin bug that strums spider webs to lure in a tasty snack. The cuttlefish that...