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Selected Works of David D Nolte
Book
Galileo Unbound: The History of Modern Dynamics
(2018)
  • David D Nolte
Link
Abstract
Table of Contents:

    Chapter 1: Flight of the Swallows
        - Introduction to motion and trajectories
    Chapter 2: A New Scientist
        - Galileo’s Biography
    Chapter 3: Galileo’s Trajectory
        - Study of the science of motion
        - Publication of Two New Sciences
    Chapter 4: On the Shoulders of Giants
        - Newton’s Principia
        - The Principle of Least Action: Maupertuis, Euler, and Voltaire
        - Lagrange and his new dynamics
    Chapter 5: Geometry on my Mind
        - Differential geometry of Gauss and Riemann
        - Vector spaces from Grassmann to Hilbert
        - Fractals: Cantor, Weierstrass, Hausdorff
    Chapter 6: The Tangled Tale of Phase Space
        - Liouville and Jacobi
        - Entropy and Chaos: Clausius, Boltzmann and Poincare
        - Phase Space: Gibbs and Ehrenfest
    Chapter 7: The Lens of Gravity
        - Einstein and the warping of light
        - Black Holes: Schwarzschild’s radius
        - Oppenheimer versus Wheeler
        - The Golden Age of General Relativity
    Chapter 8: On the Quantum Footpath
        - Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics
        - Schrödinger’s wave mechanics
        - Bohr’s complementarity
        - Einstein and entanglement
        - Feynman and the path-integral formulation of quantum
    Chapter 9: From Butterflies to Hurricanes
        - KAM theory of stability of the solar system
        - Steven Smale’s horseshoe
        - Lorenz’ butterfly: strange attractor
        - Feigenbaum and chaos
    Chapter 10: Darwin in the Clockworks
        - Charles Darwin and the origin of species
        - Fibonnacci’s bees
        - Economic dynamics
        - Mendel and the landscapes of life
        - Evolutionary dynamics
        - Linus Pauling’s molecular clock and Dawkins meme
    Chapter 11: The Measure of Life
        - Huygens, von Helmholtz and Rayleigh oscillators
        - Neurodynamics
        - Euler and the Seven Bridges of Königsberg
        - Network theory: Strogatz and Barabasi

Keywords
  • history of physics,
  • quantum mechanics,
  • relativity,
  • chaos theory,
  • nonlinear dynamics,
  • biophysics,
  • evolutionary dynamics,
  • fractals,
  • differential geometry,
  • phase space,
  • entropy
Disciplines
Publication Date
2018
Citation Information
David D Nolte. Galileo Unbound: The History of Modern Dynamics. (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ddnolte/29/