Yearning for the Impossible: The Surprising Truths of Mathematics. This item is unavailable.Yearning for the Impossible: The Surprising Truths of Mathematics

This book explores the history of mathematics from the perspective of the creative tension between common sense and the "impossible" as the author follows the discovery or invention of new concepts that have marked mathematical progress: - Irrational and Imaginary Numbers - The Fourth Dimension - Curved Space - Infinity and others The author puts these creations into a broader context involving related "impossibilities" from art, literature, philosophy, and physics. By imbedding mathematics into a broader cultural context and through his clever and enthusiastic explication of mathematical ideas the author broadens the horizon of students beyond the narrow confines of rote memorization and engages those who are curious about the place of mathematics in our intellectual landscape.

John Stillwell, originally from Melbourne, Australia, is a Mathematics Professor at the University of San Francisco. He earned his M.Sc. in 1965 from the University of Melbourne, and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1970. His writing covers a wide spectrum of mathematics. He has translated classic texts by Dirichlet, Dedekind, Poincare, and Dehn and has written several originals, including: Mathematics and Its History, The Four Pillars of Geometry, and Elements of Number Theory, among others. In 2005 he was awarded the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America for his expository writing.