Book:Ian Stewart/17 Equations that Changed the World

Ian Stewart: Seventeen Equations that Changed the World

Published $\text {2012}$, Profile

ISBN 978 1 8466 8532 3

Contents

Why Equations?

1 The squaw on the hippopotamus

Pythagoras's Theorem

2 Shortening the proceedings

Logarithms

3 Ghosts of departed quantities

Calculus

4 The system of the world

Newton's Law of Gravity

5 Portent of the ideal world

The Square Root of Minus One

6 Much ado about knotting

Euler's Formula for Polyhedra

7 Patterns of chance

Normal Distribution

8 Good vibrations

Wave Equation

9 Ripples and blips

Fourier Transform

10 The ascent of humanity

Navier-Stokes Equation

11 Waves in the ether

Maxwell's Equations

12 Law and disorder

Second Law of Thermodynamics

13 One thing is absolute

Relativity

14 Quantum weirdness

Schrödinger's Equation

15 Codes, communications and computers

Information Theory

16 The imbalance of nature

Chaos Theory

17 The Midas formula

Black-Scholes Equation

Where next?

Notes

Illustration Credits

Index