It’s expensive, The Symbolic Universe, and it’s aimed at and will
probably only be understood by theoretical physicists and mathematicians. But
there’s a gem embedded in this collection of surveys by international authors on
the relations between physics and mathematics since the development of
Einstein’s theory of relativity: the introduction, by editor Jeremy Gray, which
offers a masterly and approachable review of the period. Published by Oxford
University Press, £55, ISBN 0198500882.
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