Riemann, topology, and physics
By: Michael Monastyrsky ; with a foreword by Freeman J. Dyson ; translated by Roger Cooke, James King, Victoria King
Contributors: Dyson, Freeman J.
Edition: 2nd ed.
Series: Modern Birkha user Classics; Modern Birkha user classics
Publisher: Birkhha user
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Boston, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
ISBN-13: 9780817647780
Subjects: Mathematicians; Mathematical physics; Biography; Kondensierte Materie; Topologie; Feldtheorie; Topology
Description: This significantly expanded second edition of Riemann, Topology, and Physics combines a fascinating account of the life and work of Bernhard Riemann with a lucid discussion of current interaction between topology and physics. The author, a distinguished mathematical physicist, takes into account his own research at the Riemann archives of Go ttingen University and developments over the last decade that connect Riemann with numerous significant ideas and methods reflected throughout contemporary mathematics and physics. Special attention is paid in part one to results on the Riemann-Hilbert problem and, in part two, to discoveries in field theory and condensed matter such as the quantum Hall effect, quasicrystals, membranes with nontrivial topology, "fake" differential structures on 4-dimensional Euclidean space, new invariants of knots and more. In his relatively short lifetime, this great mathematician made outstanding contributions to nearly all branches of mathematics; today Riemann's name appears prominently throughout the literature.
Notes: Includes index.

"Reprint of the 1999 second edition."
Table of contents: title: Preface to the Second Edition; title: Preface to the First Edition; title: From the Introduction to the First Edition; title: Acknowledgements; title: Bernhard Riemann; title: Topological Themes in Contemporary Physics; title: Index.