VERY GOOD: The dust jacket and actual covers are in very good condition. The pages are clean and the pages and cover are stiff to open, indicating little use.
Product Details
"It is rare for a mathematical problem to catch the attention of the general public. But for a century and a half, the four-colour problem on the colouring of maps has been one of the most famous conundrums in the whole of mathematics, if not the most famous. Many thousands of puzzlers, amateur problem-solvers and professional mathematicians have struggled to solve it.
"In this book I {author} present the entertaining history of the four-colour problem and its solution. It is a story with many interesting and eccentric characters, including Lewis Carroll, the Bishop of London, a professor of French Literature, an April Fool hoaxer, a botanist who loved heather, a mathematician with a passion for golf, a man who set his watch just once a year, a bridegroom who spent his honeymoon colouring maps, and a Californian traffic cop."—from the Preface
Well-written and easy to read, this book leads the reader through the steps to solving one of history's greatest head-scratchers. Wilson covers the problem from both a planar and spherical graphic perspective. He also throws in a few related problems for good measure such as MÖBIUS AND THE FIVE PRINCES and maps drawn on surfaces other than spheres.
