Actions for Indra's pearls : the vision of Felix Klein

Email RIS file
Bookmark
Report an Issue

Indra's pearls : the vision of Felix Klein / David Mumford, Caroline Series and David Wright ; with cartoons by Larry Gonick

Author
Mumford, David, 1937-
Published
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Physical Description
1 online resource (xix, 395 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Additional Creators
Series, Caroline, Wright, David James, and Gonick, Larry
Access Online

Availability

I Want It
I Want It

Finding items...

Contents
The language of symmetry -- A delightful fiction -- Double spirals and Möbius maps -- The Schottky dance -- Fractal dust and infinite words -- Indra's necklace -- The glowing gasket -- Playing with parameters -- Accidents will happen -- Between the cracks -- Crossing boundaries -- Epilogue -- Index -- Road map.
Summary
"Felix Klein, one of the great nineteenth-century geometers, discovered in mathematics an idea prefigured in Buddhist mythology: the heaven of Indra contained a net of pearls, each of which was reflected in its neighbour, so that the whole Universe was mirrored in each pearl. Klein studied infinitely repeated reflections and was led to forms with multiple co-existing symmetries, each simple in itself, but whose interactions produce fractals on the edge of chaos. For a century these images, which were practically impossible to draw by hand, barely existed outside the imagination of mathematicians. However in the 1980s the authors embarked on the first computer exploration of Klein's vision, and in so doing found further extraordinary images of their own. Join the authors on the path from some basic mathemathical ideas to the simple algorithms that create the delicate fractal filigrees, most of which have never appeared in print before. Beginners can learn to understand what the images mean and follow the step-by-step instructions for writing computer programs that generate them. More advanced readers can see how the images relate to ideas that take them to the forefront of research."--Jacket.
Subject(s)
ISBN
9780511065309 (electronic bk.)
0511065302 (electronic bk.)
9781107050051 (electronic bk.)
1107050057 (electronic bk.)
9780511067433
0511067437
0521352533
9780521352536
9781107712683 (e-book)
1107712688
9781107564749 (paperback)
1107564743
Digital File Characteristics
data file
Note
Includes index.
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 43159863