The Knot Book: An Elementary Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots - Softcover

Adams, Colin Conrad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805073809 ISBN 13: 9780805073805

Publisher: Owl Books, 2000

Synopsis

If you are a student of mathematics, a scientist working in fields affected by knot theory research, or a curious amateur who finds mathematics intriguing, The Knot Book is for you. With this engagingly written and illustrated book, you will be working with some of the most advanced ideas in contemporary mathematics.

About this title

Review

In February 2001, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that they had recorded a simple knot untying itself. Crafted from a chain of nickel-plated steel balls connected by thin metal rods, the three-crossing knot stretched, wiggled, and bent its way out of its predicament--a neat trick worthy of an inorganic Houdini, but more, a critical discovery in how granular and filamentary materials such as strands of DNA and polymers entangle and enfold themselves.

A knot seems a simple, everyday thing, at least to anyone who wears laced shoes or uses a corded telephone. In the mathematical discipline known as topology, knots are anything but simple: at 16 crossings of a "closed curve in space that does not intersect itself anywhere", a knot can take one of 1,388,705 permutations, and more are possible. All this thrills mathematics professor Colin Adams, whose primer The Knot Book offers an engaging if often challenging introduction to the mysterious, often unproven, but, he suggests, ultimately knowable nature of knots of all kinds--whether nontrivial, satellite, torus, cable or hyperbolic. As perhaps befits its subject, Adams's prose is sometimes... well, tangled ("A knot is amphicheiral if it can be deformed through space to the knot obtained by changing every crossing in the projection of the knot to the opposite crossing.") but his book is great fun for puzzle and magic buffs, and a useful reference for students of knot theory and other aspects of higher mathematics. --Gregory McNamee

Review

"Adams is an expert in knot theory, and this shows in the clarity and accuracy of his writing, and in the rich store of examples and problems . . . We are going to see much more of knot theory and its applications, and this book is an excellent place to start." --"Nature"

Edition details

• Publisher: Owl Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0805073809
• ISBN 13: 9780805073805
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320