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Questions tagged [reading-list]

Questions about recommended reading on a specific topic or from a specific time period.

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165 votes
23 answers
30k views

Do you read the masters?

I often hear the advice, "Read the masters" (i.e., read old, classic texts by great mathematicians). But frankly, I have hardly ever followed it. What I am wondering is, is this a ...
93 votes
20 answers
10k views

Short papers for undergraduate course on reading scholarly math

(I know this is perhaps only tangentially related to mathematics research, but I'm hoping it is worthy of consideration as a community wiki question.) Today, I was reminded of the existence of this ...
67 votes
14 answers
23k views

A reading list for topological quantum field theory?

Can you suggest a reading list, or at least a few papers that you think would be useful, for a beginner in topological quantum field theory? I know what the curvature of a connection is, know basic ...
35 votes
13 answers
5k views

Great mathematics books by pre-modern authors

Last summer, I read Euclid's Elements, and it was an eye-opening experience; I had assumed that three thousand years' difference would make the notation incomprehensible and the reasoning alien, but ...
29 votes
5 answers
3k views

Handling arXiv feeds to avoid duplicates

I subscribe to feeds from the arXiv Front for a number of subject areas, using Google Reader. This is great, but there is one problem: when a new preprint is listed in several subject categories, it ...
19 votes
11 answers
4k views

Approachable French masters

Similar to this topic, what are the easiest foundational French texts for someone learning the language? My intuition would be Cauchy and Lebesgue, but I have no idea where to start or which of their ...
17 votes
17 answers
3k views

Readings for an honors liberal art math course

Our university has an Honors section of our "liberal arts mathematics" course. Typically 10-20 students enroll each Fall, with most of them extremely bright, but lacking the interest and/or ...