Classics On Fractals (Studies in Nonlinearity)

By Gerald A. Edgar

Book Overview

Fractals are an important topic in such varied branches of science as mathematics, computer science, and physics. Classics on Fractals collects for the first time the historic papers on fractal geometry, dealing with such topics as non-differentiable functions, self-similarity, and fractional dimension. Of particular value are the twelve papers that have never before been translated into English. Commentaries by Professor Edgar are included to aid the student of mathematics in reading the papers, and to place them in their historical perspective. The volume contains papers from the following: Cantor, Weierstrass, von Koch, Hausdorff, Caratheodory, Menger, Bouligand, Pontrjagin and Schnirelmann, Besicovitch, Ursell, Levy, Moran, Marstrand, Taylor, de Rahm, Kolmogorov and Tihomirov, Kiesswetter, and of course, Mandelbrot.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813341531
• ISBN13: 9780813341538
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Westview Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

The Laying of Cornerstones of Modern Math

The title of this book is subversive. Compared to the contents of other popular books on fractals, such as Peitgen & Saupe's "Chaos and Fractals", the reader will find almost no commonality except for the word "fractal" in the title. And this is what makes this book so wonderful and refreshing. Other pop books on fractals tend to be filled with shallow descriptions, crude phenomenology, and neither hint of the underlying...

Where it all began

This anthology is a collection of the classic essays on chaos, from before chaos theory was created or the word 'fractal' was coined. The math level is a little high for the general reader, but it is well worth reading once the reader has the necessary background.