Andrew and Joanna McFarland

James T. Smith

 

Alfred Tarski
Early Work in Poland
Geometry and Teaching

TaskiCover.jpg (8.5KB)

Birkhäuser, 2014

 

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Alfred Tarski (1901-1983) was a renowned Polish/American mathematician, a giant of the twentieth century, who helped establish the foundations of geometry, set theory, model theory, algebraic logic, and universal algebra. Throughout his career, he taught mathematics and logic at universities and sometimes in secondary schools. Many of his writings before 1939 were in Polish and remained inaccessible to most mathematicians and historians until now.

This self-contained book focuses on Tarski's early contributions to geometry and mathematics education, including the famous Banach-Tarski paradoxical decomposition of a sphere as well as high-school mathematical topics and pedagogy. These themes are significant, since Tarski's later research on geometry and its foundations stemmed in part from his early employment as a high-school mathematics teacher and teacher-trainer. The book contains careful translations and much newly uncovered social background of these works written during Tarski's years in Poland.

Alfred Tarski: Early Writings serves the mathematical, educational, philosophical, and historical communities by publishing Tarski's early writings in a broadly accessible form, providing background from archival work in Poland, and updating Tarski's bibliography.


Click here for a table of contents.

Click here for the publisher's web page for the book.

Click here for a review by the Mathematical Association of America.

Click here for a review in zbMATH (Zentralblatt).

Click here for a review by the American Mathematical Society.

Click here for a review in Wiadomosci Matematyczne (in Polish).

Click here for a review in History and Philosophy of Logic.


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15 November 2022