Abstract
In twentieth century mathematics the word ’spectrum’ occurs in many places and is used to describe a wide variety of apparently unrelated ideas. The evolution of the meaning of this word begins with the rainbow of light created by a prism and passes by way of integral equations and quantum mechanics to the space of prime ideals of a ring. Along the way one glimpses much of modern harmonic analysis and operator theory.
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References
J. Dieudonné, History of Functional Analysis, Notas de Matemática ( 77 ), North-Holland (Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, 1981 ).
LA. Steen, “Highlights in the history of spectral theory”, Amer. Math. Monthly 80(1973) 359–381.
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© 1985 Plenum Press, New York
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Taylor, D.E. (1985). From Rainbows to Rings: A History of the Idea of the Spectrum. In: Price, J.F. (eds) Fourier Techniques and Applications. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2525-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2525-3_13
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