Timeline for Why were matrix determinants once such a big deal?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 16, 2016 at 12:00 | comment | added | J.J. Green | Further to @user5117's helpful note, the ISBN-13 of the Dover edition is 978-0486606705 | |
| Sep 25, 2012 at 20:50 | comment | added | user5117 | I doubt that anyone is reading this comment thread any longer, but just in case: Muir's Treatise (revised by Metzler) was reprinted by Dover sometime in the 1960s. (I can't see the exact date, but the back cover boasts: "The paper is chemically the same as you would find in books priced $5.00 or more." So it must be pretty old!) There are surely many copies floating around on used book websites. | |
| Jun 7, 2012 at 1:57 | comment | added | kjetil b halvorsen | I once read a book (forgot exact title and author) written about 1920, about the history af determinants and matrices. It defined first the determinat, and then defined a matrix as " the matrix of a determinant"! The matrix was seen as just a practical way of writing the numbers of the determinant! | |
| Sep 22, 2010 at 10:00 | comment | added | Denis Serre | Which Serre ? I don't remember having said that. But perhaps I just forgot... | |
| Aug 23, 2010 at 13:42 | comment | added | Jiahao Chen | Googling "Who killed determinants?" turned up some interesting papers such as "Computing Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors without Determinants" (McWorter, 1998) and "A short survey of some recent applications of determinants" (Vein, 1982). | |
| Aug 19, 2010 at 5:38 | comment | added | Victor Miller | Kenneth May made a rather delightful film, distributed by the MAA called "Who killed determinants?" (I think that it dates from around 1965) which goes over much of the history. It also has an interesting analysis of the number of papers published about determinants in each year and what seemed to influence the volume of publication (such as the publication of Muir's treatise). | |
| Aug 18, 2010 at 21:12 | history | edited | KConrad | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Aug 18, 2010 at 20:52 | comment | added | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez | Serre makes that pronouncement in an interview, which one can find at sps.nus.edu.sg/~limchuwe/articles/serre.html | |
| Aug 18, 2010 at 20:50 | comment | added | Victor Protsak | BTW, Michigan History of Science collection will print and bind it for you on demand, and it would cost less than xeroxing it at 10c/page. A library at my former institution took advantage of it to replace one of the volumes that was missing. | |
| Aug 18, 2010 at 20:46 | comment | added | Jiahao Chen | The library copy I had access to was tattered and boxed for preservation. I was hoping someone else had a better idea that I of what was in there. :) | |
| Aug 18, 2010 at 20:41 | history | answered | KConrad | CC BY-SA 2.5 |