Customer Reviews

Elements of mathematics (Actualitʹes scientifiques et industrielles)

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After Cauchy, Fourier, Galois, French Math dominance in 17th & 18th centuries had been overtaken in 19th century by their defeated (by Napolean) enemy: Germany, which produced the "Prince of Math" Gauss and his bright students and great Gottingen successors (Riemann, Dedekind, Cantor, Kronecker, Wierestrass, Hilbert, Felix Klein, Lindermann, etc).

Before World War I, a group of Ecole Normale Superieure students (ENS which,like Ecole Polytechniques, expelled the Math genius Evariste Galois) , headed by Andre Weil, realised that French Math Textbooks were outdated and decided to form a Math Study Group nicknamed "Bourbaki" consisted of a few bright ENS classmates, met regularly in the Cafe near Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris, with the intention to rewrite the entire Mathematics based on the new SET Theory by Cantor, and followed the example of the Greek Euclid's 13-volume "Elements of Geometry", called their huge volumes "Elements of Mathematics" (Les Elements de Mathematiques). {Ref: "The artist and the mathematician : the story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the genius mathematician who never existed" by Amir D. Aczel}

The Bourbaki books are the "Bible" of New Math, still relevant today for the following reasons:

1. As Abel had said of the secret of his Math genius, heeded by his younger successor Galois: "Read Directly from the Master's works".

2. In the first 16 years of Fields Medal (given every 4 years), 3 out 4 winners were from Bourbaki Masters.

3. The best book written on SET THEROY is still from Bourbaki.

I strongly recommend any reputable world-class Reference Library to stock up on the entire series of Bourbaki. The English translation is as good as the French original, if not better, thanks to the additional english explanatory notes by the translators, not available in French version.