The True Story of Henri Poincare and His Revolutionary Discovery of Chaos Theory.
The fascinating story of a brilliant mathematical thinker and his startling theory, one that was ignored for decades.
In 1885, King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway announced a mathematics contest in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The prize would go to the essay that established the stability of the Solar System, a question that had fascinated mathematicians and astronomers for centuries.
This book tells the story of how, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Henri Poincare, one of the most brilliant and original mathematical thinkers of his generation, entered the contest. His solutions were startling. Poincare's discovery - implying that the solar system was chaotic, a few decimal points from annihilation - was neglected for decades.
