Seventeen Equations that Changed the World

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Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Even though it was later supplanted by Einstein's theory of relativity, it is still essential for a practical description of how objects in space, like stars, planets, and human-made spacecraft, interact with each other. Maxwell's equations are to classical electromagnetism as Newton's laws of motion and law of universal gravitation are to classical mechanics — they are the foundation of our explanation of how electromagnetism works on a day to day scale. The populist banker bashing this chapter represented made me seriously question the accuracy of the detail in the other chapters. Paul Coxon's twitter account by mathematics tutor and blogger Larry Phillips that summarizes the equations.

While we take the idea of universal laws for granted today, in earlier eras the idea that the terrestrial and celestial worlds shared the same properties was revolutionary. I also always get really irritated with knot theory, as the first thing mathematicians do is say 'Let's join the ends up. James Clerk Maxwell transformed early experimental observations and empirical laws about magnetism and electricity into a system of equations for electromagnetism.

They are valid because, given our basic assumptions about the logical structure of mathematics, there is no alternative. In the book Stewart traced a history of the role of mathematics in human history, beginning with the Pythagorean theorem (Pythagorean equation) [4] to the equation that transformed the twenty-first century financial market, the Black–Scholes model. An entertaining and illuminating collection of curious facts and histories suitable for random dipping-in or reading straight through.

The section on the Schrodinger equation, for example, is presented in such a way that it's almost impossible to understand what he's on about, throwing around terms like the Hamiltonian and eigenfunctions without ever giving enough information to follow the description of what is happening. He has that valuable grasp of not only what it takes to make equations interesting, but also to make science cool. Stewart provides the "historical background" to explain "how the equation was anticipated", how people then "generalized the ideas and formalized the results".In In Pursuit of the Unknown, celebrated mathematician Ian Stewart uses a handful of mathematical equations to explore the vitally important connections between math and human progress.