Books about Polymath from Amazon.com

Physics textbooks identify Thomas Young (1773-1829) as the experimenter who first proved that light is a wave--not a stream of corpuscles as Newton proclaimed In any book on the eye and vision, Young is the London physician who showed how the eye focuses and proposed the three-color theory of vision confirmed only in 1959. In any book on ancient Egypt, Young is credited for his crucial detective work in deciphering the Rosetta Stone. It is hard to grasp how much he knew.
Invited to contribute to a new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Young offered the following subjects: Alphabet, Annuities, Attraction, Capillary Action, Cohesion, Colour, Dew, Egypt, Eye, Focus, Friction, Halo, Hieroglyphic, Hydraulics, Motion, Resistance, Ship, Sound, Strength, Tides, Waves, and anything of a medical nature. He asked that all his contributions be kept anonymous.
While not yet thirty he gave a course of lectures at the Royal Institution covering virtually all of known science. But polymathy made him unpopular in the academy. An early attack on his wave theory of light was so scathing that English physicists buried it for nearly two decades until it was rediscovered in France. But slowly, after his death, great scientists recognized his genius.
Today, in an age of professional specialization unimaginable in 1800, polymathy still disturbs us. Is this kind of curiosity selfish, even irresponsible?  Here is the story of a driven yet modest hero, the last man who knew everything..
Price: $2.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The biblical commentaries of Rabbi Abraham Ion Ezra (1089/1092-1164/1167) have become indispensable to anyone desiring a full appreciation of the biblical text, and this noted scholar also wrote extensively on philology, philosophy. mathematics, and astrology. The six essays in this hook explore lbn Ezra's multi-faceted work and intellectual legacy. They illuminate his exegetical methodology; the role of astrology in his work; his philological insights into the Hebrew language; the possibility of his influence on the great Jewish philosopher and jurist. Maimonides; the numerous supercommentaries called forth by his enigmatic commentary; and modern Jewish perspectives on him. Contributors are Jay M. Harris, Simhah Kogut, Y. Tzvi Langermann, Nahum Sarna, Uriel Simon, and Isadore Twersky. Two of the essays are in Hebrew..
Price: $32.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This award-winning historical novel deals with the stormy life of the outstanding Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, using historical sources, and particularly material from the writer's works, to construct the personal and intellectual universe of a fourteenth-century genius. The dominant concern of the novel -- the uneasy relationship between intellectuals and political power, between scholars and authority -- addresses our times through the transparent veil of history.
In the first part of the novel, we are introduced to the mind of Ibn Khaldun as he dictates his work to his scribe and interlocutor. The second part delves into the heart of the man and his retrieval of a measure of happiness and affection in a remarriage, after the drowning of his first wife and their children at sea. Finally we see Ibn Khaldun as a man of action, trying to minimize the imminent horrors of invading armies and averting the sack of Damascus by Tamerlane, only to spend his last years lonely and destitute, having been fired from his post as qadi, his wife having gone to Morocco, and his attempts at saving the political situation having come to nil..
Price: $18.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Problem Solving in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering with POLYMATH™, Excel, and MATLAB®, Second Edition, is a valuable resource and companion that integrates the use of numerical problem solving in the three most widely used software packages: POLYMATH, Microsoft Excel, and MATLAB. Recently developed POLYMATH capabilities allow the automatic creation of Excel spreadsheets and the generation of MATLAB code for problem solutions. Students and professional engineers will appreciate the ease with which problems can be entered into POLYMATH and then solved independently in all three software packages, while taking full advantage of the unique capabilities within each package. The book includes more than 170 problems requiring numerical solutions.

This greatly expanded and revised second edition includes new chapters on getting started with and using Excel and MATLAB. It also places special emphasis on biochemical engineering with a major chapter on the subject and with the integration of biochemical problems throughout the book.

General Topics and Subject Areas, Organized by Chapter

• Introduction to Problem Solving with Mathematical Software Packages

• Basic Principles and Calculations

• Regression and Correlation of Data

• Introduction to Problem Solving with Excel

• Introduction to Problem Solving with MATLAB

• Advanced Problem-Solving Techniques

• Thermodynamics

• Fluid Mechanics

• Heat Transfer

• Mass Transfer

• Chemical Reaction Engineering

• Phase Equilibrium and Distillation

• Process Dynamics and Control

• Biochemical Engineering

Practical Aspects of Problem-Solving Capabilities

• Simultaneous Linear Equations

• Simultaneous Nonlinear Equations

• Linear, Multiple Linear, and Nonlinear Regressions with Statistical Analyses

• Partial Differential Equations (Using the Numerical Method of Lines)

• Curve Fitting by Polynomials with Statistical Analysis

• Simultaneous Ordinary Differential Equations (Including Problems Involving Stiff Systems, Differential-Algebraic Equations, and Parameter Estimation in Systems of Ordinary Differential Equations)

The Book's Web Site (http://www.problemsolvingbook.com)

• Provides solved and partially solved problem files for all three software packages, plus additional materials

• Describes discounted purchase options for educational version of POLYMATH available to book purchasers

• Includes detailed, selected problem solutions in Mapleâ„¢, Mathcad®, and Mathematicaâ„¢

.
Price: $40.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]