Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1945-

Gödel, Escher, Bach : les brins d'une guirlande éternelle by Douglas R Hofstadter( Book )
21 editions published between 1985 and 2008 in French and held by 323 libraries worldwide
Publié aux Etats-Unis en 1979, ce best-seller international a notamment remporté le prix Pulitzer 1980. L'auteur, brillant professeur d'informatique, "établit des liens entre les gravures d'Escher, la musique de Bach et la logique mathématique, et nous rend intelligibles des similitudes cachées entre des domaines aussi variés que la biologie, la psychologie, la physique et la linguistique

Exact thinking in demented times : the Vienna Circle and the epic quest for the foundations of science by Karl Sigmund( Book )
1 edition published in 2017 in English and held by 268 libraries worldwide
The philosophy of science between the two world wars, 1920s-1930s

The discovery of dawn by Walter Veltroni( Book )
1 edition published in 2008 in English and held by 225 libraries worldwide
Story about a man who reclaims his past. Giovanni Astengo keeps his life at arm's length: the father of a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, Stella, and a forlorn, world-weary 20-year-old, Lorenzo, Giovanni is also still searching for his own lost father, who vanished during a period of political terrorism in 1977. Revisiting the country house his parents used to frequent, Giovanni discovers there that he can call his 13-year-old self (on the eve of his father's disappearance, no less) by dialing his old phone number. Over the phone, Giovanni tries to change the future by having his younger self look for clues about his father's disappearance. There are fascinating intellectual tenets coursing through Veltroni's work, and the bond that forms between the two Giovannis is beautifully realized, as is the clarity that the older Giovanni finally achieves

Alan Turing : the enigma by Andrew Hodges( Book )
12 editions published between 2000 and 2014 in English and German and held by 223 libraries worldwide
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. A gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution, Andrew Hodges's acclaimed book captures both the inner and outer drama of Turing's life. Hodges tells how Turing's revolutionary idea of 1936--the concept of a universal machine--laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. The book also tells how this work was directly related to Turing's leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during World War II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory in the Atlantic. At the same time, this is the tragic story of a man who, despite his wartime service, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program--all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime

La chamade by Françoise Sagan( Book )
7 editions published between 2005 and 2009 in English and held by 209 libraries worldwide
Set in Paris in the mid-1960s, Lucile, a young, rootless woman, finds herself torn between a fifty-year-old businessman and a thirty-year-old hot-blooded, impulsive editor; and, in a companion to the novel, the translator describes the process of rewriting the novel

Einsicht ins Ich : Fantasien und Reflexionen über Selbst und Seele by Douglas R Hofstadter( Book )
24 editions published between 1981 and 2008 in 6 languages and held by 161 libraries worldwide
"En este libro excepcional (desafío a la inteligencia y la imaginación), el ganador del Premio Pulitzer en 1980, Douglas R. Hofstadter, y el filósofo Daniel C. Dennett exploran el significado del Yo y de la conciencia de sí mismo, internándose en perspectivas que incluyen la literatura, la psicología, la filosofía, el psicoanálisis y muchos otros ámbitos. ¿Qué es la mente? ¿Quién soy yo? ¿La materia puede pensar? ¿Dónde está el alma? El ojo de la mente procura responder a estas y a muchas otras preguntas acuciantes sobre la relación del hombre con su mundo, el universo, sus orígenes, y propone insólitos experimentos mentales, fantasías alarmantes, diálogos irónicos y deslumbrantes de ingenio: todos ellos proyectan la imaginación por caminos insospechados. Con materiales elegidos entre la narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges o la literatura de Stanislaw Lem, por ejemplo, o seleccionados entre las conjeturas científícas sobre las máquinas de pensar, la inteligencia artificial o la naturaleza del cerebro, Hofstadter y Dennett ofrecen un vértigo de imágenes del Yo y la mente: cada una de ellas con generalizaciones audaces, pero con aspectos rigurosamente científicos. Obra de arte, texto asombrosamente documentado, El ojo de la mente no puede sino seducir a una amplia gama de lectores: desde el más severo materialista hasta el creyente en espíritus y reencarnaciones."--Contratapa

Gödel, Escher, Bach : een eeuwige gouden band by Douglas R Hofstadter( Book )
26 editions published between 1979 and 2016 in 7 languages and held by 141 libraries worldwide
Speels overzicht van de moderne wiskunde

Butterfly in the quantum world : the story of the most fascinating quantum fractal by Indubala I Satija( Book )
9 editions published in 2016 in English and held by 54 libraries worldwide
"Butterfly in the Quantum World by Indu Satija, with contributions by Douglas Hofstadter, is the first book to tell the story of the "Hofstadter butterfly", a beautiful and fascinating graph lying at the heart of the quantum theory of matter. The butterfly came out of a simple-sounding question: What happens if you immerse a crystal in a magnetic field? What energies can the electrons take on? From 1930 onwards, physicists struggled to answer this question, until 1974, when graduate student Douglas Hofstadter discovered that the answer was a graph consisting of nothing but copies of itself nested down infinitely many times. This wild mathematical object caught the physics world totally by surprise, and it continues to mesmerize physicists and mathematicians today. The butterfly plot is intimately related to many other important phenomena in number theory and physics, including Apollonian gaskets, the Foucault pendulum, quasicrystals, the quantum Hall effect and many more. Its story reflects the magic, the mystery and the simplicity of the laws of nature, and Indu Satija, in a wonderfully personal style, relates this story, enriching it with a vast number of lively historical anecdotes, many photographs, beautiful visual images and even poems, making her book a great feast for the eyes, for the mind and for the soul."--Page 4 of cover