James D Stein

This book tells the stories of some of the great quests of mathematics, such as the centuries-long pursuit for the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. These quests are searches for difficult-to-discover universal truths, pursued with passion not only by mathematicians and scientists, but by kings, emperors and even Jean-Luc Picard, the captain of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise. Some of their exploits are adventures as fascinating as any historical or current-day drama. The truths they have discovered help us understand not only mathematics, but also the Universe — and sometimes, ourselves.

In addition to well-known quests such as Fermat's Last Theorem and the Goldbach Conjecture, some of the chapters describe more recent pursuits such as the Traveling Salesman Problem and the Multi-armed Bandit Problem. While some of the quests have been completed, others are still ongoing, and one (the Six Squares Problem) can be understood — and maybe even solved — by a five-year-old child.

Contents:

• About the Author
• Introduction
• About the Cover
• The Quests of Antiquity:
  • The Great Geometric Puzzles of Ancient Greece
• Quests of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance:
  • The Roots of Polynomials
  • The Goldbach Conjecture
  • Fermat's Last Theorem
• Recent — and Relatively Recent — Quests:
  • The Incompleteness Theorem and the Continuum Hypothesis
  • The Bridges of Königsberg and the Four-Color Theorem
  • The Quests of the Twentieth Century
  • The Quests of the Twenty-First Century
  • The Traveling Salesman Problem
• Love Affairs:
  • The Banach Contraction Principle
  • The Multi-Armed Bandit Problem
  • CHaikus
• Index

Readership: This book is targeted toward general readers interested in mathematics or the history of mathematics. Most of the book can be appreciated by people who have at most the equivalent of highschool-level courses in algebra and geometry. This book is an especially attractive resource for mathematics teachers at the elementary and secondary levels.