Abraham Robinson – the Creation of Nonstandard Analysis a Personal & Mathematical Odyssey: The Creation of Nonstandard Analysis, A Personal and Mathematical Odyssey (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Dauben, Joseph Warren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691037450 ISBN 13: 9780691037455

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1995

Synopsis

One of the most prominent mathematicians of the twentieth century, Abraham Robinson discovered and developed nonstandard analysis, a rigorous theory of infinitesimals that he used to unite mathematical logic with the larger body of historic and modern mathematics. In this first biography of Robinson, Joseph Dauben reveals the mathematician's personal life to have been a dramatic one: developing his talents in spite of war and ethnic repression, Robinson personally confronted some of the worst political troubles of our times. With the skill and expertise familiar to readers of Dauben's earlier works, the book combines an explanation of Robinson's revolutionary achievements in pure and applied mathematics with a description of his odyssey from Hitler's Germany to the United States via conflict-ridden Palestine and wartime Europe.

About this title

Review

Joseph Warren Dauben, Winner of the 2012 Albert Leon Whiteman Memorial Prize, American Mathematical Society
"This masterpiece of scientific biography presents the eventful life and the pioneering work of a remarkable figure of twentieth-century pure and applied mathematics as well as symbolic logic. [A] well-written and most carefully researched text [that is] enlightening and delightful to read. Dauben alternates two narratives, biography and the progression of science, not omitting daily and academic life, and their background in general and cultural history, of the stations of Robinson's odyssey.... The book is bound to become an indispensable source for future historical work."--Detlef Laugwitz, Mathematical Reviews

"Robinson, who expressed a certain preference for 'glamour,' led a life that is interesting for its own sake. Dauben's account of it is engrossingly intimate."--Albert C. Lewis, Isis

About the Author

Dauben is Professor of History and the History of Science at Herbert H. Lehman College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691037450
• ISBN 13: 9780691037455
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 580