The Princeton Companion to Mathematics
The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a book providing an extensive overview of mathematics that was published in 2008 by Princeton University Press. Edited by Timothy Gowers with associate editors June Barrow-Green and Imre Leader, it has been noted for the high caliber of its contributors. The book was the 2011 winner of the Euler Book Prize of the Mathematical Association of America, given annually to "an outstanding book about mathematics".[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
The book concentrates primarily on modern pure mathematics rather than applied mathematics, although it does also cover both applications of mathematics and the mathematics that relates to those applications;
it provides a broad overview of the significant ideas and developments in research mathematics.[2][4][7] It is organized into eight parts:[4][5][6][7][10]
Despite its length, the range of topics included is selective rather than comprehensive: some important established topics such as diophantine approximation are omitted, transcendental number theory, differential geometry, and cohomology get short shrift, and the most recent frontiers of research are also generally not included.[6]
Contributors[edit]
The contributors to The Princeton Companion to Mathematics consist of 133 of the world's best mathematicians.[1][2][9] Timothy Gowers, its editor, is the recipient of the Fields Medal, considered to be the top honor in mathematics.[2][4] Other contributors include Fields medalists Michael Atiyah, Alain Connes, Charles Fefferman, and Terence Tao, and well-known mathematicians Noga Alon, George Andrews, Béla Bollobás, John P. Burgess, Kevin Buzzard, Clifford Cocks, Ingrid Daubechies, Persi Diaconis, Jordan Ellenberg, Oded Goldreich, Andrew Granville, Jeremy Gray, Frank Kelly, Sergiu Klainerman, Jon Kleinberg, János Kollár, Peter Lax, Dusa McDuff, Barry Mazur, Carl Pomerance, Eleanor Robson, Peter Sarnak, Madhu Sudan, Clifford Taubes, and Avi Wigderson. Among the historians who contributed to it are Charles C. Gillispie, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Jeremy Gray, Niccolò Guicciardini, Ulf Hashagen, Eberhard Knobloch, Karen Hunger Parshall, Eleanor Robson, and Erhard Scholz.[1][4][5][6][7]
Awards[edit]
Gowers and the Princeton Companion were the 2011 winners of the Euler Book Prize of the Mathematical Association of America, given annually to "an outstanding book about mathematics".[1]
The Princeton Companion was also listed as an outstanding title by Choice Magazine, a publication of the American Library Association, in 2009.[12]