The Chaos Avant-garde

Book excerpt: This book is an authoritative and unique reference for the history of chaos theory, told by the pioneers themselves. It also provides an excellent historical introduction to the concepts. There are eleven contributions, and six of them are published here for the first time OCo two by Steve Smale, three by Yoshisuke Ueda, and one each by Ralph Abraham, Edward Lorenz, Christian Mira, Floris Takens, T Y Li and James A Yorke, and Otto E Rossler. Contents: On How I Got Started in Dynamical Systems 1959OCo1962 (S Smale); Finding a Horseshoe on the Beaches of Rio (S Smale); Strange Attractors and the Origin of Chaos (Y Ueda); My Encounter with Chaos (Y Ueda); Reflections on the Origin of the Broken-Egg Chaotic Attractor (Y Ueda); The Chaos Revolution: A Personal View (R Abraham); The Butterfly Effect (E Lorenz); I Gumowski and a Toulouse Research Group in the OC PrehistoricOCO Times of Chaotic Dynamics (C Mira); The Turbulence Paper of D Ruelle & F Takens (F Takens); Exploring Chaos on an Interval (T Y Li & J A Yorke); Chaos, Hyperchaos and the Double-Perspective (O E RAssler). Readership: Educators and university students of science and mathematics."