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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Dork!
Title: The Archimedes Codex: How A Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist
Authors: Reviel Netz and William Noel
Apparently there's very few records of Archimedes' work; none that survive today were written in his hand. His scrolls were transferred to parchment around the end of the first millenium, and some of those were subsequently scraped down and reused, as scribes in those days often did.
The one in question here turned into a prayer book in the 1200's. That prayer book survived, though it was neglected, and was put up for auction in the late 1990's, purchased by an anonymous but very wealthy man. At that point, it was in terrible shape, ravaged by mold, bookworms, missing pages, general deterioration, and a few forged drawings on top of the prayers on top of the Archimedes.
Noel is the conservator of a museum in Baltimore that ended up leading the attempts to restore and decipher the book, while Netz is a mathematician/historian/Archimedes scholar. They wrote the book together, alternating chapters, describing both the work taking place in modern day and also discussing Archimedes' theorems, proofs, and discoveries (which are rather incredible).
At first, the fact that neither Netz nor Noel identify themselves when they start their chapters is a bit confusing, but then you realize that the chapters themselves are very, very focused - all math, or all conservation/restoration. They each manage to simplify their topics such that anyone can follow along, though the geometric proofs were so simplified and glossed over that I found them more confusing than if they'd actually gone step by step.
The conservation process sounds incredible - they managed to use all sorts of new technologies to decipher the ancient text, resulting in new discoveries both in the science of reading ancient texts and in the knowledge of Archimedes' genius.
Also fascinating was how many of the people involved in the process were volunteers. Noel got the press to do stories on the book, and all sorts of people volunteered time and knowledge. He posed issues to scientists, and for the promise of a negligible prize and the satisfaction of solving a major problem they did so. There may be a documentary out there about this saga; I haven't put any effort into tracking it down. Either way, you can get more information at www.archimedespalimpsest.org.Labels: bacteria, books, math, non-fiction
posted by ket at
3:07 PM
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Thursday, September 20, 2007
the hardest math problem, ever
Fermat's Last Theorem
by: Amir D. Aczel
bookmark: resubscribe notice from National Geographic Adventure Magazine
Remember the Pythagorean Theorem? x^2 + y^2 = z^2 -- that one? It says that a square number can be broken down ino the sum of two other square numbers. Three hundred and sixty years ago, a French jurist named Pierre de Fermat, who dabbled in mathematics in his spare time (those crazy jurists!!), was reading about a related problem on breaking a square number into the sum of two squares, when he jotted this note in the margin of the very rare book Arithmetica, written by a third-century Greek named Diophantus:
On the other hand, it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a biquadrate into two biquadrates, or generally any power except a square into two powers with the same exponent. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which, however, the margin is not large enough to contain.
Two conclusions arise from this: First, Fermat's local library probably hated him. Second, he seems to have kind of a wry sense of humor.
More importantly, this simple statement came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem, and went on to become perhaps the most vexing problem in all of mathematics. We don't call it his Last Theorem because it was the last one he wrote--we're not even sure when he wrote it, and that copy of Arithmetica has long since been lost to the ages. It's referred to as his last theorem because all of his other theorems had already been either proven or disproven--decades or even centuries ago. This one stumped everybody.
In fact, it proved so vexing that it would take over three hundred years and the work of dozens of mathematicians working all fields of mathematics to solve it. So vexing that entire new branches of mathematics, even new numbers had to be invented before we could even approach the solution.
Aczel manages an incredible task. He collapses four millenia of mathematical history into 136 pages (the book is hardcover, and I carried it around in my back pocket for a couple days) that are... gripping. I'll readily and happily admit that I'm probably the biggest geek on this blog (we have lots of book geeks, a law geek, a theater/singing/dance geek, and a champion of libraries, but I'm a straight-up math and science geek. ~e is my closest competition here, and I think even she'd agree I have an edge), but I'm also fond of telling people that I'm not very good at math. You don't have to be. Anybody who's made it through high school algebra, and maybe a touch of calculus, can understand this book. Aczel explains everything you need to know to understand how Andrew Wiles eventually developed a solution to the Hardest Math Problem Ever. When he gets to the more advanced stuff--math that is truly understood by maybe a dozen people in the entire world--he gives an explanation that is general enough to give the reader a basic idea of what's happening, without actually going into so much detail as to lose anyone. For all the math explained in this tiny book, there's hardly any numbers anywhere. Aczel could explain these concepts to an English major, and they'd still come out of it feeling more enlightened than befuddled.
That's what is most fascinating to me about this book. I mean, sure--the book has it all. Political intrigue, suicide, deception, theft, deceit, betrayal, centuries of history and scientific progress, secret societies, and lots and lots of math, but it's crammed neatly and tidily into a very small volume. It's easily readable by anyone with a good grasp of math, and not too daunting for anyone else. The book is entirely unlike the problem, which had everybody stumped for so long that many of the brightest mathematical minds this world has ever seen simply dismissed it, believing that it would either never be solved or at least not in their lifetimes.
Aczel writes:
What is interesting about Fermat's Last Theorem, however, is that it spans mathematical history from the dawn of civilization to our own time. And the theorem's ultimate solution also spans the breadth of mathematics, involving fields other than number theory: algebra, analysis, geometry, and topology--virtually all of mathematics.
And in that, the book is exactly like the problem
Labels: history, math, mystery/detective, non-fiction
posted by reyn at
7:58 AM
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