Spinning Tops

A Course on Integrable Systems

By Michele Audin

1996

First Published

148

Number of Pages

4H29M

Audio Length

Part of Series

Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics book cover 1

Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics

Series · 103 books

By A.J. Berrick, Daniel W. Stroock, Welington de Melo, and more

Since the time of Lagrange and Euler, it has been well known that an understanding of algebraic curves can illuminate the picture of rigid bodies provided by classical mechanics. Many mathematicians have established a modern view of the role played by algebraic geometry in recent years. This book presents some of these modern techniques, which fall within the orbit of finite dimensional integrable systems. The main body of the text presents a rich assortment of methods and ideas from algebraic geometry prompted by classical mechanics, while in appendices the author describes general, abstract theory. She gives the methods a topological application, for the first time in book form, to the study of Liouville tori and their bifurcations.

Author

Michele Audin

Author · 2 books

Michèle Audin is a French mathematician, and a professor at l'Institut de recherche mathématique avancée (IRMA) in Strasbourg, where she does research notably in the area of symplectic geometry. Born in 1954, she is a former student of l'École normale supérieure de jeunes filles within the École normale supérieure Sèvres. She became a member of l'Oulipo in 2009. She is the daughter of mathematician Maurice Audin, who died under torture in 1957 in Algeria, after having been arrested by parachutists of General Jacques Massu. On January 1, 2009, she refused to receive the Legion of Honour, on the grounds that the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, had refused to respond to a letter written by her mother regarding the disappearance of her father. (from Wikipedia)