Celestial encounters
Subtitle: the origins of chaos and stability
By: Florin Diacu and Philip Holmes.
Contributors: Holmes, Philip, 1945-
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
Subjects: Many-body problem.; Chaotic behavior in systems.; Celestial mechanics.
Description: Celestial Encounters is for anyone who has ever wondered about the foundations of chaos. In 1888, the 34-year-old Henri Poincare submitted a paper that was to change the course of science, but not before it underwent significant changes itself. "The Three-Body Problem and the Equations of Dynamics" won a prize sponsored by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway and the journal Acta Mathematica, but after accepting the prize, Poincare found a serious mistake in his work.

While correcting it, he discovered the phenomenon of chaos. Starting with the story of Poincare's work, Florin Diacu and Philip Holmes trace the history of attempts to solve the problems of celestial mechanics first posed in Isaac Newton's Principia in 1686. In describing how mathematical rigor was brought to bear on one of our oldest fascinations - the motions of the heavens - they introduce the people whose ideas led to the flourishing field now called nonlinear dynamics.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-224) and index.