Full Description
Since its publication, C.F. Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801) has acquired an almost mythical reputation, standing as an ideal of exposition in notation, problems and methods; as a model of organisation and theory building; and as a source of mathematical inspiration. Eighteen authors - mathematicians, historians, philosophers - have collaborated in this volume to assess the impact of the Disquisitiones, in the two centuries since its publication.
Contents
A Book's History.- A Book in Search of a Discipline (1801-1860).- Several Disciplines and a Book (1860-1901).- Algebraic Equations, Quadratic Forms, Higher Congruences: Key Mathematical Techniques of the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae.- The Disquisitiones Arithmeticae and the Theory of Equations.- Composition of Binary Quadratic Forms and the Foundations of Mathematics.- Composition of Quadratic Forms: An Algebraic Perspective.- The Unpublished Section Eight: On the Way to Function Fields over a Finite Field.- The German Reception of the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae: Institutions and Ideas.- A Network of Scientific Philanthropy: Humboldt's Relations with Number Theorists.- 'O ??ò?' A??????í???: The Rise of Pure Mathematics as Arithmetic with Gauss.- Complex Numbers and Complex Functions in Arithmetic.- From Reciprocity Laws to Ideal Numbers: An (Un)Known Manuscript by E.E. Kummer.- Elliptic Functions and Arithmetic.- Numbers as Model Objects of Mathematics.- The Concept of Number from Gauss to Kronecker.- On Arithmetization.- Number Theory and the Disquisitiones in France after 1850.- The Hermitian Form of Reading the Disquisitiones.- Number Theory at the Association française pour l'avancement des sciences.- Spotlighting Some Later Reactions.- An Overview on Italian Arithmetic after the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae.- Zolotarev's Theory of Algebraic Numbers.- Gauss Goes West: The Reception of the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae in the USA.- Gauss's Theorems in the Long Run: Three Case Studies.- Reduction Theory of Quadratic Forms: Towards Räumliche Anschauung in Minkowski's Early Work.- Gauss Sums.- The Development of the Principal Genus Theorem.
