“The reasonings about the wonderful and intricate operations of Nature are so full of uncertainty, that, as the Wise-man truly observes, hardly do we guess aright at the things jhat are upon earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us.” Stephen Hales, Vegetable Staticks (1727), p. 318, 1738. “Ever since […]

If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, the wish to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that if we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men. […]

The National Science Foundation has rendered a useful service in reprinting Science, the Endless Frontier as part of its tenth anniversary observance. The Report, as well as the studies that supported it, represents the collective efforts of a group of distinguished scientists and other scholars who brought their special experience and knowledge to bear on […]

The theory of relativity is intimately connected with the theory of space and time. I shall therefore begin with a brief investigation of the origin of our ideas of space and time, although in doing so I know that I introduce a controversial subject. The object of all science, whether natural science or psychology, is […]

This book contains an exposition and various applications of a mathematical theory of games. The theory has been developed by one of us since 1928 and is now published for the first time in its entirety. The applications are of two kinds: On the one hand to games in the proper sense, on the other […]

The present volume continues the theory of series begun in Volume II, and then proceeds to the theory of measurement. Geometry we have found it necessary to reserve for a separate final volume, In the theory of well-ordered series and compact series, we have followed Cantor closely, except in dealing with Zermelo’s theorem (#257 — […]

Principia Mathematica was first published in 19 1 0—13 ; this is the fifth impression of the second edition of 192^-7. The Principia has long been recognized as one of the intellectual landmarks of the century. It was the first book to show clearly the close relationship between mathematics and formal logic. Starting from a […]

Symmetry is one of the ideas by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty, and perfection. Starting from the somewhat vague notion of symmetry = harmony of proportions, this book gradually develops first the geometric concept of symmetry in its several forms as bilateral, translator^, rotational, ornamental and crystallographic […]

“It was a perfectly ordinary night at Christ’s high table, except that Hardy was’ dining as a guest. He had just returned to Cambridge as Sadleirian professor, and I had heard some- thing of him from young Cambridge mathematicians. They were delighted to have him back: he was a real mathematician, they said, not like […]

[My father’s autobiographical recollections, given in the present chapter, were written for his children,–and written without any thought that they would ever be published. To many this may seem an impossibility; but those who knew my father will understand how it was not only possible, but natural. The autobiography bears the heading, ‘Recollections of the […]