List of important publications in mathematics
This is a list of important publications in mathematics, organized by field.
Some reasons why a particular publication might be regarded as important:
- Topic creator – A publication that created a new topic
- Breakthrough – A publication that changed scientific knowledge significantly
- Influence – A publication which has significantly influenced the world or has had a massive impact on the teaching of mathematics.
Publication data: c. 300 BC
Online version: Interactive Java version
Description: This is probably not only the most important work in geometry but the most important work in mathematics. It contains many important results in geometry, number theory and the first algorithm as well. The Elements is still a valuable resource and a good introduction to algorithm. More than any specific result in the publication, it seems that the major achievement of this publication is the popularization of logic and mathematical proof as a method of solving problems.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence, Introduction, Latest and greatest (though it is the first, some of the results are still the latest)
Description: La Géométrie was published in 1637 and written by René Descartes. The book was influential in developing the Cartesian coordinate system and specifically discussed the representation of points of a plane, via real numbers; and the representation of curves, via equations.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence
Description: Published in 1879, the title Begriffsschrift is usually translated as concept writing or concept notation; the full title of the book identifies it as "a formula language, modelled on that of arithmetic, of pure thought". Frege's motivation for developing his formal logical system was similar to Leibniz's desire for a calculus ratiocinator. Frege defines a logical calculus to support his research in the foundations of mathematics. Begriffsschrift is both the name of the book and the calculus defined therein.
Importance: Arguably the most significant publication in logic since Aristotle.
Description: First published in 1895, the Formulario mathematico was the first mathematical book written entirely in a formalized language. It contained a description of mathematical logic and many important theorems in other branches of mathematics. Many of the notations introduced in the book are now in common use.
Importance:Influence
Description: The Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead and published in 1910-1913. It is an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic. The questions remained whether a contradiction could be derived from the Principia's axioms, and whether there exists a mathematical statement which could neither be proven nor disproven in the system. These questions were settled, in a rather disappointing way, by Gödel's incompleteness theorem in 1931.
Importance: Influence
(Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, vol. 38 (1931).)
Online version: Online version
Description: In mathematical logic, Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two celebrated theorems proved by Kurt Gödel in 1930. The first incompleteness theorem states:
For any formal system such that (1) it is -consistent (omega-consistent), (2) it has a recursively definable set of axioms and rules of derivation, and (3) every recursive relation of natural numbers is definable in it, there exists a formula of the system such that, according to the intended interpretation of the system, it expresses a truth about natural numbers and yet it is not a theorem of the system.
Importance: Breakthrough, Influence
See the list of publications in information theory.
Description: The Disquisitiones Arithmeticae is a textbook of number theory written by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and first published in 1801 when Gauss was 24. In this book Gauss brings together results in number theory obtained by mathematicians such as Fermat, Euler, Lagrange and Legendre and adds important new results of his own.
Importance: Breakthrough, Influence
Description: On the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude (or Über die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse) is a seminal 8-page paper by Bernhard Riemann published in the November 1859 edition of the Monthly Reports of the Berlin Academy. Although it is the only paper he ever published on number theory, it contains ideas which influenced dozens of researchers during the late 19th century and up to the present day. The paper consists primarily of definitions, heuristic arguments, sketches of proofs, and the application of powerful analytic methods; all of these have become essential concepts and tools of modern analytic number theory.
Importance: Breakthrough, Influence
Description: Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie (Lectures on Number Theory) is a textbook of number theory written by German mathematicians P.G.L. Dirichlet and Richard Dedekind, and published in 1863. The Vorlesungen can be seen as a watershed between the classical number theory of Fermat, Jacobi and Gauss, and the modern number theory of Dedekind, Riemann and Hilbert. Dirichlet does not explicitly recognise the concept of the group that is central to modern algebra, but many of his proofs show an implicit understanding of group theory
Importance: Breakthrough, Influence
Description:An historical study of number theory, written by one of the 20th century's greatest researchers in the field. The book covers some thirty six centuries of arithmetical work but the bulk of it is devoted to a detailed study and exposition of the work of Fermat, Euler, Lagrange, and Legendre. The author wishes to take the reader into the workshop of his subjects to share their successes and failures. A rare opportunity to see the historical development of a subject through the mind of one of its greatest practitioners.
Importance:
Description: The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin: "mathematical principles of natural philosophy", often Principia or Principia Mathematica for short) is a three-volume work by Isaac Newton published on July 5, 1687. Probably the most influential scientific book ever published, it contains the statement of Newton's laws of motion forming the foundation of classical mechanics as well as his law of universal gravitation. He derives Kepler's laws for the motion of the planets (which were first obtained empirically). In formulating his physical theories, Newton had developed a field of mathematics known as calculus.
Up to the publication of this book, mathematics was only used to describe nature. This is the first instance when mathematics is used to explain nature. Here was born the practice, now so standard we identify it with science, of explaining nature by postulating mathematical axioms and demonstrating that their conclusion are observable phenomena. In other words, the greatness of the Principia is not only in developing a number of fundamental theories in physics and mathematics but first and foremost (amply demonstrated in the title!) in the very linking of science and mathematics. The influence of this book is so deep that nowadays we find this link obvious and cannot imagine doing science in any other way.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence
Description: An exposition, using modern notation and language, of a large part of Newton's above-cited masterwork. Mathematical and physical language and notation have evolved considerably since Newton's time, making it difficult for a modern reader to read Newton's original work even in translation from the original Latin. Chandrasekhar's labor of love makes it possible for a modern reader, familiar with the modern treatment of algebra, geometry and calculus to appreciate Newton's genius through following his work as he originally conceived it.
Importance: Interpretation for the modern reader of a great classic of mathematics and science
Description: Introductions to differential and integral calculus in a single and many variables respectively.
Importance: Introduction
Description: Method of Fluxions was a book written by Isaac Newton. The book was completed in 1671, and published in 1736.
Within this book, Newton describes a method (the Newton-Raphson method) for finding the real zeroes of a function.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence
(Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 3rd ed., Princeton University Press 1953)
Description: This book led to the investigation of modern game theory as a prominent branch of mathematics. This profound work contained the method -- alluded to above -- for finding optimal solutions for two-person zero-sum games.
Importance: Influence, Topic creator, Breakthrough
Description: The book is in two, {0,1|}, parts. The zeroth part is about numbers, the first part about games - both the values of games and also some real games that can be played such as Nim, Hackenbush, Col and Snort amongst the many described.
Importance:
Description: A compendium of information on mathematical games. It was first published in 1982 in two volumes, one focusing on Combinatorial game theory and surreal numbers, and the other concentrating on a number of specific games.
Importance:
Description: A discussion of self-similar curves that have fractional dimensions between 1 and 2. These curves are examples of fractals, although Mandelbrot does not use this term in the paper, as he did not coin it until 1975. Shows Mandelbrot's early thinking on fractals, and is an example of the linking of mathematical objects with natural forms that was a theme of much of his later work.
Importance:
Early manuscripts
These are publications that are not necessarily relevant to a mathematician nowadays, but are nonetheless important publications in the History of mathematics.
- Ahmes (copyist)
Description: It is one of the oldest mathematical texts, dating to the Second Intermediate Period of ancient Egypt. It was copied by the scribe Ahmes (properly Ahmose) from an older Middle Kingdom papyrus. Besides describing how to obtain an approximation of π only missing the mark by under one per cent, it is describes one of the earliest attempts at squaring the circle and in the process provides persuasive evidence against the theory that the Egyptians deliberately built their pyramids to enshrine the value of π in the proportions. Even though it would be a strong overstatement to suggest that the papyrus represents even rudimentary attempts at analytical geometry, Ahmes did make use of a kind of an analogue of the cotangent.
Importance:
- unknown author
Description: a Chinese mathematics book, probably composed in the 1st century AD, but perhaps as early as 200 BC. Among its content: Linear problems solved using the principle known later in the West as the rule of false position. Problems with several unknowns, solved by a principle similar to Gaussian elimination. Problems involving the principle known in the West as the Pythagorean theorem.
Importance:
Description: Although the only mathematical tools at its author's disposal were what we might now consider secondary-school geometry, he used those methods with rare brilliance, explicitly using infinitesimals to solve problems that would now be treated by integral calculus. Among those problems were that of the center of gravity of a solid hemisphere, that of the center of gravity of a frustum of a circular paraboloid, and that of the area of a region bounded by a parabola and one of its secant lines. Contrary to historically ignorant statements found in some 20th-century calculus textbooks, he did not use anything like Riemann sums, either in the work embodied in this palimpsest or in any of his other works. For explicit details of the method used, see how Archimedes used infinitesimals.
Importance:
Online version: Online version
Description: The first known (European) system of number-naming that can be expanded beyond the needs of everyday life.
Importance:
Textbooks
Description: A classic textbook in introductory mathematical analysis, written by G. H. Hardy. It was first published in 1908, and went through many editions. It was intended to help reform mathematics teaching in the UK, and more specifically in the University of Cambridge, and in schools preparing pupils to study mathematics at Cambridge. As such, it was aimed directly at "scholarship level" students — the top 10% to 20% by ability. The book contains a large number of difficult problems. The content covers introductory calculus and the theory of infinite series.
Importance:
- Richard Rusczyk and Sandor Lehoczky
Description: The Art of Problem Solving began as a set of two books coauthored by Richard Rusczyk and Sandor Lehoczky. The books, which are about 750 pages together, are for students who are interested in math and/or compete in math competitions.
Importance:
- Geoffrey Hunter
Description: An excellent introduction to the mathematical theory of logical formal systems, covering completeness-proofs, consistency-proofs, and so on and even set-theory.
Importance:
Popular writing
Description: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, first published in 1979 by Basic Books. It is a book about how the creative achievements of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach interweave. As the author states: "I realized that to me, Gödel and Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to reconstruct the central object, and came up with this book."
Importance:
Description: The World of Mathematics was specially designed to make mathematics more accessible to the inexperienced. It comprises nontechnical essays on every aspect of the vast subject, including articles by and about scores of eminent mathematicians, as well as literary figures, economists, biologists, and many other eminent thinkers. Includes the work of Archimedes, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Gregor Mendel, Edmund Halley, Jonathan Swift, John Maynard Keynes, Henri Poincaré, Lewis Carroll, George Boole, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, John von Neumann, and many others. In addition, an informative commentary by distinguished scholar James R. Newman precedes each essay or group of essays, explaining their relevance and context in the history and development of mathematics. Originally published in 1956, it does not include many of the exciting discoveries of the later years of the 20th century but it has no equal as a general historical survey of important topics and applications.
Importance:
Description: Written in 1542, it was the first really popular arithmetic book written in the English Language.
Importance:
Description: An early and popular English arithmetic textbook published in America in the eighteenth century. The book reached from the introductory topics to the advanced in five sections.
Importance:
Description: The first introductory textbook (graduate level) expounding the abstract approach to algebra developed by Emil Artin and Emmy Noether. First published in German in 1931 by Springer Verlag. A later English translation was published in 1949 by Frederick Ungar Publishing Company.
Importance: Influence
Faisceaux Algébriques Cohérents
Publication data: Annals of Mathematics, 1955
Description: FAC, as it is usually called, first introduced the use of sheaves into algebraic geometry. Serre introduced Cech cohomology of sheaves in this paper, and, despite its technical deficiencies, revolutionized algebraic geometry. For example, the long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology allows one to show that some surjective maps of sheaves induce surjective maps on sections; specifically, these are the maps whose kernel (as a sheaf) has a vanishing first cohomology group. Before FAC, this was next to impossible. While Grothendieck's derived functor cohomology has replaced Cech cohomology for technical reasons, actual calculations, such as of the cohomology of projective space, are usually carried out by Cech techniques, and for this reason Serre's paper remains important even today.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence
Description: In mathematics, algebraic geometry and analytic geometry are closely related subjects, where analytic geometry is the theory of complex manifolds and the more general analytic spaces defined locally by the vanishing of analytic functions of several complex variables. A (mathematical) theory of the relationship between the two was put in place during the early part of the 1950s, as part of the business of laying the foundations of algebraic geometry to include, for example, techniques from Hodge theory. (NB While analytic geometry as use of Cartesian coordinates is also in a sense included in the scope of algebraic geometry, that is not the topic being discussed in this article.) The major paper consolidating the theory was Géometrie Algébrique et Géométrie Analytique by Serre, now usually referred to as GAGA. A GAGA-style result would now mean any theorem of comparison, allowing passage between a category of objects from algebraic geometry, and their morphisms, and a well-defined subcategory of analytic geometry objects and holomorphic mappings.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence
Written with the assistance of Jean Dieudonne, this is Grothendieck's exposition of his reworking of the foundations of algebraic geometry. It has become the most important foundational work in modern algebraic geometry. The approach expounded in EGA, as these books are known, transformed the field and led to monumental advances.
Importance: Seminal work which revolutionized the field
- Alexander Grothendieck et al
These seminar notes on Grothendieck's reworking of the foundations of algebraic geometry report on work done at IHÉS starting in the 1960s. SGA 1 dates from the seminars of 1960-1961, and the last in the series, SGA 7, dates from 1967–1969. In contrast to EGA, which is intended to set foundations, SGA describes ongoing research as it unfolded in Grothendieck’s seminar; as a result, it is quite difficult to read, since many of the more elementary and foundational results were relegated to EGA. One of the major results building on the results in SGA is Pierre Deligne's proof of the Weil conjectures in the 1970s. Other authors who worked on one or several volumes of SGA include Michel Raynaud, Michael Artin, Jean-Pierre Serre, Jean Verdier, Pierre Deligne, and Nicholas Katz.
Importance: Seminal work which revolutionized the field
Description: The first comprehensive introductory (graduate level) text in algebraic geometry that used the language of schemes and cohomology. Published in 1977, it remains, in 2005, a good introduction to its subject.
Importance: Breakthrough textbook, influence
Universal algebra
- Wolfgang Wechler.
- Springer-Verlag.
Description:
Importance:
Topologie
Description: First published round 1935, this text was a pioneering "reference" text book in topology, already incorporating many modern concepts from set-theoretic topology, homological algebra and homotopy theory.
Importance: Influence
Topology
Description: This beautifully written introductory text is the standard undergraduate introduction to point-set and algebraic topology. Munkres is able to cover many topics with full mathematical rigor while still motivating the concepts intuitively.
Importance: Introduction
General Topology
Description:First published in the mid-1950's,for many years the only introductory graduate level textbook in the U.S.A. teaching the basics of point set, as opposed to algebraic, topology. Prior to this the material, essential for advanced study in many fields, was only available in bits and pieces from texts on other topics or journal articles.
Importance: Pioneering text. Influence.
Description: Saunders Mac Lane, one of the founders of category theory, wrote this exposition to bring categories to the masses. Mac Lane does not get lost in pointless abstraction, but instead brings to the fore the important concepts that make category theory useful, such as adjoint functors and universal objects. His text is more comprehensive than most mathematicians will ever need, and consequently is also an excellent reference.
Importance: Introduction
Category Theory for Computing Science
- Michael Barr and Charles Wells
Description: Slower-paced introduction than Mac Lane's, assuming much less math background. Suitable for budding computer-scientists, logicians, linguists, etc. 1999 edition contains extensive exercises and solutions.
Importance: Introduction
Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint
Description: This short book introduces the main concepts of differential topology in Milnor's lucid and concise style. While the book does not cover very much, its topics are explained beautifully in a way that illuminates all their details.
Importance: Influence
Algebraic Topology
- Allen Hatcher
Publication data: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Online version: http://www.math.cornell.edu/~hatcher/AT/ATpage.html
Description: This is the first in a series of three textbooks in algebraic topology having the goal of covering all the basics while remaining readable by newcomers seeing the subject for the first time. The first book contains the basic core material along with a number of optional topics of a relatively elementary nature.
Importance: Introduction
Description: First published in 1914, this was the first comprehensive introduction to set theory. Besides the systematic treatment of known results in set theory, the book also contains chapters on measure theory and topology, which were then still considered parts of set theory. Here Hausdorff presents and develops highly original material which was later to become the basis for those areas.
Importance: Influence, Introduction
Description: An undergraduate introduction to not-very-naive set theory which has lasted for decades. It is still considered by many to be the best introduction to set theory for beginners. While the title states that it is naive, which is usually taken to mean without axioms, the book does introduce all the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and gives correct and rigorous definitions for basic objects. Where it differs from a "true" axiomatic set theory book is its character: There are no long-winded discussions of axiomatic minutiae, and there is next to nothing about advanced topics like large cardinals. Instead it tried, and succeeds, in being intelligible to someone who has never thought about set theory before.
Importance: Influence, Introduction
Description:The ne plus ultra reference for basic facts about cardinal and ordinal numbers. If you have a question about the cardinality of sets occurring in everyday mathematics, the first place to look is this book, first published in the early 1950's but based on the author's lectures on the subject over the preceding 40 years.
Importance: Influence, unique reference
Description:Gödel proves the result of the title and also the consistency of the axiom of choice. Also, in the process, introduces the class L of constructible sets, a major influence in the development of axiomatic set theory.
Importance: Breakthrough, influence
Description:Published in 1966, these lecture notes from a course at Stanford University made accessible to the general mathematical community Cohen's breakthrough work proving the independence of the continuum hypothesis. In proving this Cohen introduced the concept of forcing which led to many other major results in axiomatic set theory.
Importance: Breakthrough, influence
Description: This book is not really for beginners, but graduate students with some minimal experience in set theory and formal logic will find it a valuable self-teaching tool, particularly in regard to forcing. It is far easier to read than a true reference work such as Jech, Set Theory. It may be the best textbook from which to learn forcing, though it has the disadvantage that the exposition of forcing relies somewhat on the earlier presentation of Martin's axiom.
Importance: Textbook, reference
The New Variational Method
- Leonid Kantorovich
- This work was published in 1930's in the erstwhile Soviet Republic.
Description: Kantorovich wrote the first paper on production planning, which used Linear Programs as the model. He proposed the simplex algorithm as a systematic procedure to solve these Linear Programs. He received Nobel prize for this work in 1975.
Importnace:
Decomposition Principle for Linear Programs.
- George Dantzig and P. Wolfe
- Operations Research 8:101–111, 1960.
Description: Dantzig's is considered the father of Linear Programming in the western world. He independently invented the simplex algorithm. Dantzig and Wolfe worked on decomposition algorithms for large scale linear programs in factory and production planning.
Importance:
Network Flows and General Matchings
- Ford, L., & Fulkerson, D.
- Flows in Networks. Prentice-Hall, 1962.
Description: Ford and Fulkerson paper on Network Flows. The algorithm along with many ideas on flow-based models can be found in their book. This book is supposedly very well written.
Importance:
Paths, trees and Flowers
- J. Edmonds.
- Canadian Journal of Mathematics, 17:449–467, 1965.
Description:
Importance:
The complexity of theorem proving procedures
- S. A. Cook
- Proceedings of the 3rd Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (1971), pp. 151--158.
Description: This paper introduced the concept of NP-Completeness and proved that Boolean satisfiability problem(SAT) is NP-Complete.
Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence
Reducibility among combinatorial problems
- R. M. Karp
- In R. E. Miller and J. W. Thatcher, editors, Complexity of Computer Computations, pages 85-103. Plenum Press, New York, NY, 1972.
Description: This paper showed that 21 different problems are NP-Complete and showed the importance of the concept.
Importance: Influence
How good is the simplex algorithm?
- V. Klee and G. J. Minty
- In: O. Shisha (ed.) Inequalities III, Academic Press (1972) 159–175.
Description: Klee and Minty gave example showing that simplex method can take exponentially many steps to solve a linear program if it chooses the greedy ascent rule.
Importance:
Linear Programming and Polynomial time algorithms
- L. Khachiyan
- Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 244 (1979) pp. 1093–1096 (Russian).
Description:' Khachiyan's work on Ellipsoid method. This was the first polynomial time algorithm for Linear programming.
Importance:
New polynomial-time algorithm for linear programming
- Karmarkar, N.
- Combinatorica 4, 373–395, 1984.
Description: Karmarkars path-breaking work on Interior-Point algorithms for Linear Programming.
Importance:
Interior Point Polynomial Algorithms in Convex Programming
- Yurii NESTEROV and A. NEMIROVSKY.
- Philadelphia : Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1994. (SIAM Studies in Applied Mathematics).
Description: Nesterov and Nemirovski's work on Self-concordant barriers and Interior-Point Methods for general convex programming. All their series of papers (both individual and combined) is compiled more coherently in the following "bible" of convex optimization.
Importance:
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