"The ancient Greeks argued that the best life was filled with beauty, truth, justice, play and love. The mathematician Francis Su knows just where to find them."--Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine" This is perhaps the most important mathematics book of our time. Francis Su shows mathematics is an experience of the mind and, most important, of the heart."--James Tanton, Global Math Project For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without concerts, parks, or museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a wide audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves parables, puzzles, and personal reflections to show how mathematics meets basic human desires--such as for play, beauty, freedom, justice, and love--and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. These desires and virtues, and the stories told here, reveal how mathematics is intimately tied to being human. Some lessons emerge from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can--and must--be open to all.

Linear evolution equations in Banach spaces have seen important developments in the last two decades. This is due to the many different applications in the theory of partial differential equations, probability theory, mathematical physics, and other areas, and also to the development of new techniques. One important technique is given by the Laplace transform. It played an important role in the early development of semigroup theory, as can be seen in the pioneering monograph by Rille and Phillips [HP57]. But many new results and concepts have come from Laplace transform techniques in the last 15 years. In contrast to the classical theory, one particular feature of this method is that functions with values in a Banach space have to be considered. The aim of this book is to present the theory of linear evolution equations in a systematic way by using the methods of vector-valued Laplace transforms. It is simple to describe the basic idea relating these two subjects. Let A be a closed linear operator on a Banach space X. The Cauchy problern defined by A is the initial value problern (t 2 0), (CP) {u'(t) = Au(t) u(O) = x, where x E X is a given initial value. If u is an exponentially bounded, continuous function, then we may consider the Laplace transform 00 u(>. ) = 1 e-). . tu(t) dt of u for large real>. .