Four Colours Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved

by Robin Wilson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.47

  A book to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the solution to one of the world's most puzzling mathematical problems. The four-colour theorem states that every map in the world can be coloured with just four colours in such a way that neighbouring countries have different colours. One of the simplest problems to state, one of the hardest to solve, which took a century for mathematicians to prove. This book introduces the mathematicians behind the mathematics, among them a bishop, an astronomer, a botanist, an obsessive golfer and a bridegroom who spend his honeymoon colouring maps.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $4.23

  A puzzlers delight for over a century, the four-colour problem was one of the most famous conundrums in mathematics, if not the most famous, and many thousands of puzzlers - amateur problem-solvers and professional mathematicians alike - have struggled to answer it. The problem is simply stated, and involves the colouring of maps: Can every map be coloured with no more than four colours so that neighbouring countries are coloured differently? First posed in 1852, it took more than 100 years of colouring maps and developing the necessary theoretical machinery before the result was established with certainty. Even then, difficult philosophical questions remained. Robin Wilson clarifies the problem, explains the proof and introduces the mathematicians behind the mathematics, among them a bishop, an astronomer, a botanist, an obsessive golfer and a bridegroom who spent his honeymoon colouring maps.