Overview
Previously untold story of early computing and the world’s first spy satellite
Unique accounts of personal interactions with Nobel laureates, Field’s Medal winners, and other sometimes strange famous personalities in science
Tales and secrets of high finance, and dangers therein
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
About this book
Among the group of physics honors students huddled in 1957 on a Colorado mountain watching Sputnik bisect the heavens, one young scientist was destined, three short years later, to become a key player in America’s own top-secret spy satellite program. One of our era’s most prolific mathematicians, Karl Gustafson was given just two weeks to write the first US spy satellite’s software. The project would fundamentally alter America’s Cold War strategy, and this autobiographical account of a remarkable academic life spent in the top flight tells this fascinating inside story for the first time.
Gustafson takes you from his early pioneering work in computing, through fascinating encounters with Nobel laureates and Fields medalists, to his current observations on mathematics, science and life. He tells of brushes with death, being struck by lightning, and the beautiful women who have been a part of his journey.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Crossing of Heaven
Book Subtitle: Memoirs of a Mathematician
Authors: Karl Gustafson
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22558-1
Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg
eBook Packages: Mathematics and Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-642-22557-4Published: 05 January 2012
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-44142-4Published: 22 February 2014
eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-22558-1Published: 05 January 2012
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 176
Topics: Mathematics, general, Applications of Mathematics, Quantitative Finance, Computational Mathematics and Numerical Analysis, History of Mathematical Sciences, Data Structures and Information Theory