
The 25th Anniversary Edition features a new Foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, as well as a new Preface by the author. The fundamental advance in the new 25th Anniversary Edition is that the original 501 diagrams now include brand-new captions that fully explain the geometrical reasoning, making it possible to read the work in an entirely new way―as a highbrow comic book! Complex Analysis is the powerful fusion of the complex numbers (involving the 'imaginary' square root of -1) with ordinary calculus, resulting in a tool that has been of central importance to science for more than 200 years. This book brings this majestic and powerful subject to life by consistently using geometry (not calculation) as the means of explanation. The 501 diagrams of the original edition embodied geometrical arguments that (for the first time) replaced the long and often opaque computations of the standard approach, in force for the previous 200 years, providing direct, intuitive, visual access to the underlying mathematical reality.
This book investigates whether complex analysis can be understood through geometric intuition rather than traditional, opaque algebraic computation. Tristan Needham, a mathematician and professor, argues that the historical reliance on symbolic manipulation has obscured the underlying mathematical reality of complex numbers. By utilizing a visual framework, he provides a pedagogical approach that replaces standard, calculation-heavy methods with direct, geometric reasoning to explain the fusion of complex numbers and calculus.
What You Will Find
Experts and educators frequently highlight this text as a unique and highly effective alternative to traditional, computation-focused mathematics curricula. Readers often note the density of the geometric arguments, which require careful study but offer a deeper conceptual understanding than standard analytical approaches.
Page Count:
720
Publication Date:
2023-10-19
Publisher:
OUP
ISBN-10:
0198908156
ISBN-13:
9780198908159
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