Another mathematician

Gene,
My first degree was Double Honours in Pure Maths, with a minor in Physics
and a fun year of Philosophy.

My focus in maths was on all branches of abstract algebra, with a
significant
diversion into number theory, especially diophantine equations, for the
sheer
pleasure of it.

I also did enough Applied Maths to get a feel for fruitful methods in
acoustics,
including the then-infant finite-element method.

However, I never did get a satisfactory handle on the maths involved in
celestial mechanics; Hamiltonians and tensors still confuse me, and I'm lost
by the bra-ket notation - is this just another way of writing row and column
vectors?

I do wish I had a couple of hundred years or so spare to study mathematics
a little more widely and a whole lot more deeply.

What are your specialties and special pleasures in maths?

Regards,
Yahya

-----Original Message-----
________________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 06:46:11 -0000
From: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@coolgoose.com>
Subject: Re: Digest Number 3436

...

I for one welcome another mathematician around here, and wonder which
branches of that study you are most familiar with.

...
________________________________________________________________________

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--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...> wrote:

> However, I never did get a satisfactory handle on the maths involved in
> celestial mechanics; Hamiltonians and tensors still confuse me, and
I'm lost
> by the bra-ket notation - is this just another way of writing row
and column
> vectors?

That's one way to think of it. If you choose row vectors to be the
vectors of your vector space, you can consider them ket vectors. The
bras are now column vectors, which are linear functionals; this is the
dual space.

> What are your specialties and special pleasures in maths?

Number theory and Galois theory.

-----Original Message-----
________________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 06:06:32 -0000
From: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith...>

[Yahya, earlier]
I'm lost by the bra-ket notation - is this just another way of writing row
and column vectors?

[Gene]
That's one way to think of it. If you choose row vectors to be the
vectors of your vector space, you can consider them ket vectors. The
bras are now column vectors, which are linear functionals; this is the
dual space.
[Yahya]
Thanks! Now makes perfect sense!

[Yahya, earlier]
What are your specialties and special pleasures in maths?

[Gene]
Number theory and Galois theory.
[Yahya]
Galois! One of my idols!!! (_Pace_ Pete, this was back when I still allowed
myself a modicum of hero-worship.) Still, what a brilliant, insightful
mathematician he was, and what a pathetic duellist ...

________________________________________________________________________

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