Best Selling Books by Christos H. Papadimitriou

This volume commemorates the life, work and foundational views of Kurt Gödel (1906–78), most famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of first-order logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency - with the other widely accepted axioms of set theory - of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum hypothesis. It explores current research, advances and ideas for future directions not only in the foundations of mathematics and logic, but also in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, physics, cosmology, philosophy, theology and the history of science. The discussion is supplemented by personal reflections from several scholars who knew Gödel personally, providing some interesting insights into his life. By putting his ideas and life''s work into the context of current thinking and perceptions, this book will extend the impact of Gödel''s fundamental work in mathematics, logic, philosophy and other disciplines for future generations of researchers.

The world of computation according to Turing, an interactive tutoring program, as told to star-crossed lovers: a novel. Our hero is Turing, an interactive tutoring program and namesake (or virtual emanation?) of Alan Turing, World War II code breaker and father of computer science. In this unusual novel, Turing''s idiosyncratic version of intellectual history from a computational point of view unfolds in tandem with the story of a love affair involving Ethel, a successful computer executive, Alexandros, a melancholy archaeologist, and Ian, a charismatic hacker. After Ethel (who shares her first name with Alan Turing''s mother) abandons Alexandros following a sundrenched idyll on Corfu, Turing appears on Alexandros''s computer screen to unfurl a tutorial on the history of ideas. He begins with the philosopher-mathematicians of ancient Greece—"discourse, dialogue, argument, proof... can only thrive in an egalitarian society"—and the Arab scholar in ninth-century Baghdad who invented algorithms; he moves on to many other topics, including cryptography and artificial intelligence, even economics and developmental biology. (These lessons are later critiqued amusingly and developed further in postings by a fictional newsgroup in the book''s afterword.) As Turing''s lectures progress, the lives of Alexandros, Ethel, and Ian converge in dramatic fashion, and the story takes us from Corfu to Hong Kong, from Athens to San Francisco—and of course to the Internet, the disruptive technological and social force that emerges as the main locale and protagonist of the novel. Alternately pedagogical and romantic, Turing (A Novel about Computation) should appeal both to students and professionals who want a clear and entertaining account of the development of computation and to the general reader who enjoys novels of ideas.

Christos H. Papadimitriou and Kenneth Steiglitz have combined the theory of computational complexity developed by computer scientists, and the foundations of mathematical programming developed by the operations research community. This text will be useful to students with a wide range of backgrounds, including computer science, operations research, and electrical engineering.