Research Catalog

Title

Voltaire's riddle : micromegas and the measure of all things / Andrew J. Simoson.

Author

Simoson, Andrew.

Publication

[Washington, D.C.] : Mathematical Association of America, c2010

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Voltaire, 1694-1778.

Description

xvii, 377 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

"Did you know that Voltaire was the first to publish the legend of Isaac Newton discovering gravity upon seeing an apple fall? That he tried for about eight years to be a mathematician? That in 1752 he wrote Micromégas, a story about a French expedition to the arctic (1736-7) whose purpose was to test Newton's controversial theories about gravity? This book is about that story and its underlying mathematics. Briefly, an alien giant visits the earth and encounters the expedition returning from north of the Baltic Sea. Their ensuing dialogue ranges from measurements of the very small to the very large, from gnats and micro-organisms to planets and stars, from man's tendency to make war to dreams of understanding his own spirit. At the end of their conversation, the giant gives man a book with the answers to all things. But when they open it, it is blank. That is the riddle of this book. What does such an ending mean? As a series of vignettes and chapters, we give some riddle resolutions. The vignettes -- requiring no special mathematical knowledge -- describe the people, traditions, and events of the expedition and story. The chapters -- accessible to anyone with a background in undergraduate linear algebra, vector calculus, and differential equations -- show why a rotating earth must be flattened at the poles, why the tip of earth's polar axis traces out a curve with period of nearly twenty-six thousand years, why the path of a small black hole dropped at the earth's equator must be a hypocycloid, why an old problem studied by Maupertuis -- the leader of the French expedition -- is a pursuit curve, and why in measuring phenomena we sometimes get it wrong. All in all, this book is a case study in how mathematical and scientific knowledge becomes common knowledge"--Page 4 of cover.

Series Statement

Dolciani mathematical expositions ; no. 39

Uniform Title

Dolciani mathematical expositions no. 39.

Subject

• Voltaire, 1694-1778
• 1700-1799
• Authors, French > 18th century > Biography
• Philosophers > France > Biography
• Science in literature
• Mathematics in literature

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 359-366) and index

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction -- Vignette I.A dinner invitation I. The annotated Micromegas -- Vignette II. Here be giants -- 2. The micro and the mega Vignette III. The Bastille -- 3. Fragments from flatland Vignette IV. A want-to-be mathematician -- 4. Newton's polar ellipse Vignette V.A bourgeois poet in the temple of taste -- 5. A mandarin orange or a lemon? -- Vignette VI. The zodiac -- 6. Hipparchus's twist Vignette VII. Love triangles -- 7. Durer's hypocycloid Vignette VIII. Maupertuis's hole -- 8. Newton's other ellipse Vignette IX. The man in the moon -- 9. Maupertuis's pursuit curve Vignette X. Voltaire and the almighty -- 10. Solomon's pi Vignette XI. A Laputian tree -- 11. Moon pie Vignette XII. A last curtain call -- 12. Riddle resolutions Appendix -- Cast of characters Comments on selected exercises References -- Index.

ISBN

• 0883853450
• 9780883853450

OCLC

• 461592944
• SCSB-10292114

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library