George Green: Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841: The Background to His Life and Work

Description

Mathematicians and lay people alike will enjoy this fascinating book that details the life of George Green, a pioneer in the application of mathematics to physical problems. Green was a mathematical physicist who spent most of the first 40 years of his life working not as a physicist but as a miller in his father's grain mill. Green received only four terms of formal schooling, and at the age of nine he had surpassed his teachers. Green studied mathematics in his spare time and in 1828 published his most famous work, An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism. It was in this essay that the famous Green's Theorem and Green's functions first appeared. Although this work was largely ignored during his lifetime, it is now considered of major importance in modern physics. This is the first major biography of Green, and the most complete picture of Green's life and education, available today. Green is presented as a person rather than as merely the inventor of a mathematical function. This updated second edition includes a new section of scientific references along with the lectures given by Julian Schwinger and Freeman Dyson at the bicentenary celebration of George Green's birth held at the University of Nottingham in 1993.