A distinguished gathering of mathematics scientists address themselves here to the large and growing audience of curious and thoughtful readers, including those without formal training in the higher reaches of mathematics and those who believe they may have forgotten what they once knew. Some of the contributors describe striking developments mathematics; others concentrate on the myriad applications of mathematics to other fields.
Many of the essays can be understood by today's breed of scientifically oriented high-school student. They could be equally appealing to his father, whose most elaborate application of mathematics may be the completion of the income-tax form but whose curiosity about some of the most heady intellectual adventures of this century may have survived his graduation into middle age.
The book was prepared by the Committee on Support of Research in the Mathematical Sciences (COSRIMS) for the National Academy of Sciences as part of an effort to gauge the present status and envision the future needs and directions of the mathematical sciences in the United States. The Committee has dealt with educational, manpower, and monetary requirements in two National Academy publications. The essays of the present volume, almost all of them written expressly for the collection, provide a sampling which will illustrate the present-day scope of mathematical research activity and the ever-widening range of mathematical applications.
Contributors
Stanislaw Ulam, Lipman Bers, John G. Kemeny, Joshua Lederberg, H. S. M. Coxeter, J. Kiefer, J. T. Schwartz, E. J. McShane, Freeman J. Dyson, A. S. Wightman, Philip J. Davis, George E. Forsythe, Samuel Eilenberg, Lawrence R. Klein, Andrew M. Gleason, Zelig Harris, Gian-Carlo Rota, R. H. Bing, Hirsh Cohen, Mark Kac, Raymond Smullyan, J. T. Schwartz
