The Fifth Postulate: How Unraveling A Two Thousand Year Old Mystery Unraveled the Universe

Bardi, Jason Socrates

ISBN 10: 0470149094 / ISBN 13: 9780470149096

Published by John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2009

About this Item

8vo, 253 pp.

Seller Inventory # 093007

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fifth Postulate: How Unraveling A Two Thousand Year Old Mystery Unraveled the Universe
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, New York
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0470149094
• ISBN 13: 9780470149096
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Fine copy in fine dust jacket
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Mathematics

About this title

Synopsis

A deftly told tale of the 19th–century geniuses who solved the world′s oldest unsolved math problem, sparking a disruptive scientific revolution

Euclidean geometry has been profoundly influential for centuries, but its Fifth Postulate (which asserts that two parallel lines will never intersect) eluded all attempts to prove it. What happened when three 19th–century mathematicians realized that there was no way to prove the Fifth Postulate and that it ought to be discarded––along with everything they′d come to "know" about geometry? Jason Socrates Bardi shares the dramatic story of the moment that the tangible and easily understood world we live in gave way to the strange, mind–blowing world of relativity, curved space, and more.

Jason Socrates Bardi (College Park, MD) is the author of The Calculus Wars (978–1–56025–992–3).

About the Author

Jason Socrates Bardi, author of The Calculus Wars, holds master′s degrees in both science writing and molecular biophysics from Johns Hopkins University.