tradition of excellence in science writing. I’d be happy if this book was
mentioned in the same breath as any of the above.
I’ve had many colleagues over the years with whom I’ve discussed math
and science, but two in particular stand out: Professors Robert Mena and
Kent Merryfield at California State University, Long Beach. Both are ex-
cellent mathematicians and educators with a far greater knowledge and
appreciation of the history of mathematics than I have, and writing this
book was made considerably easier by their contributions.
There have been several individuals of varying technical backgrounds
with whom I have had illuminating conversations. My understanding of
some of the ideas in this book was def initely helped by conversations with
Charles Brenner, Pete Clay, Richard Helfant, Carl Stone, and David Wilc-
zynski, and I am grateful to all of them for helping me to think through
some of the concepts and devising different ways of explaining them.
Finally, I’d like to thank my agent, Jodie Rhodes, without whose persist-
ence this book may never have seen the light of day, and my editor, T. J.
Kelleher, without whose suggestions both the structure and the presenta-
tions in this book would have been much less coherent—T.J. has the rare
gift of improving a book on both the macro and the micro level. And, of
course, my wife, Linda, who contributed absolutely nothing to the book,
but contributed inestimably to all other aspects of my life.
NOTES- Any two-digit number can be written as 10TU, where T is the tens digit and U
the units digit. Reversing the digits gives the number 10UT, and subtracting
the second from the first yields 10TU (10UT) 9 T 9 U9(TU), which
is clearly divisible by 9. - B. E. Johnson, “Continuity of Homomorphisms of Algebras of Operators,” Jour -
nal of the London Mathematical Society, 1 967: pp. 537–541. It was only four pages
long, but reading research mathematics is not like reading the newspaper. Al-
though it was not a technically difficult paper (no involved calculations, which
can slow down the pace of reading to a crawl), it contained a number of incredi-
bly ingenious ideas that neither Bill nor I had seen before. This paper essentially
made my thesis, as I was able to adapt some of Johnson’s ideas to the problem
that I had been addressing.
Preface viii