Books

Books : reviews

Necia Grant Cooper, ed.
From Cardinals to Chaos: reflections on the life and legacy of Stanislaw Ulam.
CUP. 1987

Contents

Francoise Ulam. Esquisse. 1987
Stanislaw M. Ulam. Vita. excerpts from Adventures of a Mathematician. 1987
Gian-Carlo Rota. The Lost Cafe. 1987
J. Carson Mark. From Above the Fray. 1987
David Hawkins. The Spirit of Play---A Memoir for Stan Ulam. 1987
R. Daniel Maudlin. Probability and Nonlinear Systems. 1987
Paul R. Stein. Iteration of Maps, Strange Attractors, and Number Theory---An Ulamian Potpourri. 1987
Jan Mycielski. Learning from Ulam: Measurable Cardinals, Ergodicity, and Biomathematics. 1987
Ronald L. Graham. A Similarity Measure for Graphs---Reflections on a Theme of Ulam. 1987
N. Metropolis. The Beginning of the Monte Carlo Method. 1987
Roger Eckhardt. Stan Ulam, John von Neumann, and the Monte Carlo Method. 1987
Tony Warnock. Randon-Number Generators. 1987
Gary D. Doolen, John Hendricks. Monte Carlo at Work. 1987
Francis H. Harlow. Early Work in Numerical Hydrodynamics. 1987
Didier Besnard, Francis H. Harlow, Norman L. Johnson, Rick Rauenzahn, Jonathan Wolfe. Instabilities and Turbulence. 1987
Brosl Hasslacher. Discrete Fluids. 1987
Tsutomu Shimomura, Gary D. Doolen, Brosl Hasslacher, Castor Fu. Calculations Using Lattice Gas Techniques. 1987
David K. Campbell. Nonlinear Science---From Paradigms to Practicalities. 1987
Let me start from a very simple, albeit circular, definition: nonlinear science is the study of those mathematical systems and natural phenomena that are not linear. Ever attuned to the possibility of bons mots, Stan once remarked that this was "like defining the bulk of zoology by calling it the study of 'non-elephant animals'." His point, clearly, was that the vast majority of mathematical equations and natural phenomena are nonlinear, with linearity being the exceptional, but important, case.
Adrian Patrascioiu. The Ergodic Hypothesis: A Complicated Problem of Mathematics and Physics. 1987
Stanislaw M. Ulam. Reflections on the Brain's Attempts to Understand Itself. Gamow Memorial Lecture. 1982
William A. Beyer. An Ulam Distance. 1987
Walter B. Goad. Sequence Analysis---Contributions by Ulam to Molecular Genetics. 1987
J. Carson Mark, Stanislaw M. Ulam. A Memorable Memo. 1947
The numbers 0-100, in alphabetical order
Stanislaw M. Ulam. Sub Rosa---A Trialogue. 1987
Francoise Ulam. Conversations with Rota. 1987

Necia Grant Cooper, Geoffrey B. West.
Particle Physics: a Los Alamos primer.
CUP. 1988

This lively well-illustrated collection of articles written by a group of particle physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory presents to the expert and non-expert alike a comprehensive overview of the major theoretical and experimental advances of the past twenty years. It explains the emergence of a profoundly new understanding of the fundamental forces of Nature. With the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interaction, physicists now stand at the brink of a complete unification of all the forces, including gravity. This achievement brought with it a rich new vocabulary of names and concepts: quarks, gluons, nonabelian gauge theories, spontaneous symmetry breaking, supersymmetry, strings, and worlds of ten dimensions. The exposition of these ideas, done on a variety of technical levels, is designed to interest a broad audience ranging from the professional theorist and experimentalist t0 the inquisitive student. Even a layman can enjoy this book.

It includes theoretical discussions of scaling, the renormalization group, the standard model which encompasses the electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics, grand unified theories including supersymmetry, superstrings and the family problem. The experimental articles focus on tests of the standard model, underground experiments, and accelerator developments including plans for the SSC. The volume closes with a provocative round table discussion among workers in the field that gives a broad perspective as well as personal viewpoints.