Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Series on Dynamic Material Properties

The Mathematical Reports of S.M. Ulam and his Los Alamos Collaborators

S. M. Ulam, A. R. Bednarek, Françoise Ulam

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780520322929
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

During his forty-year association with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, mathematician Stanislaw Ulam wrote many Laboratory Reports, usually in collaboration with colleagues. Some of them remain classified to this day. The rest are gathered in this volume and for the first time are easily accesible to mathematicians, physical scientists, and historians.The timeliness of these papers is remarkable. They contain seminal ideas in such fields as nonlinear stochastic processes, parallel computation, cellular automata, and mathematical biology. The collection is of historical interest as well, During and after World War II, the complexity of problems at the frontiers of science surpassed any technology that had ever existed. Electronic computing machines had to be developed and new computing methods had to be invented based on the most abstract ideas from the foundations of mathematics and theoretical physics.To these problems and others in physics, astronomy, and biology, Ulam was able to bring both general insights and specific conceptual contributions. His fertile ideas were far ahead of their time, and ranged over many branches of science. In fact, his mathematical versatility fulfilled the statement of his friend and mentor, the great Polish mathematician Stefan Banach, who claimed that the very best mathematicians see "analogies between analogies."Introduced by A. R. Bednarek and Francoise Ulam, these Los Alamos reports represent a unique view of one of the twentieth century's intellectual masters and scientific pioneers.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Table of contents

• Cover
• CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• 1. Theory of Multiplicative Processes
• 2. Statistical Methods in Neutron Diffusion
• 3. Multiplicative Systems in Several Variables, I, II, III
• 4. Heuristic Studies in Problems of Mathematical Physics on High Speed Computing Machines
• 5. Studies of Nonlinear Problems
• 6. On the Ergodic Behavior of Dynamical Systems
• 7. On a Method of Propulsion of Projectiles by Means of External Nuclear Explosions
• 8. Some Schemes for Nuclear Propulsion. Part I
• 9. On the Possibility of Extracting Energy from Gravitational Systems by Navigating Space Vehicles
• 10. Quadratic Transformations
• 11. Nonlinear Transformation Studies on Electronic Computers
• 12. On Recursively Defined Geometrical Objects and Patterns of Growth
• 13. Computer Studies of Some History-Dependent Random Processes
• 14. The Entropy of Interacting Populations
• 15. Some Elementary Attempts at Numerical Modeling of Problems Concerning Rates of Evolutionary Processes
• 16. The Notion of Complexity
• 17. Metrics in Biology, an Introduction
• 18. On the Theory of Relational Structures and Schemata for Parallel Computation
• 19. The Scottish Book, A LASL Monograph
• 20. On the Notion of Analogy and Complexity in Some Constructive Mathematical Schemata
• 21. Speculations about the Mechanisms of Recognition and Discrimination (LA-UR-82-62, 1982)
• APPENDIX A. PUBLICATIONS OF STANISLAW M. ULAM