The Genesis of Simulation in Dynamics: Pursuing the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Problem

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This book introduces some aspects of the development of the modern theory of dynamics and simulation to a wide audience of scientifically literate readers. Unlike some other general texts on chaos theory and dynamical systems theory, this book follows the work on a specific problem at the very beginning of the modern era of dynamics, from its inception in 1954 through the early 1970s. It discusses such problems as the nonlinear oscillator simulation carried out by Fermi, Pasta and Ulam at Los Alamos in the 1940s, the seminal discoveries by Lorentz at MIT in the early 1950s, the mathematical rediscovery of solitons in the late 1950s and the general problems of computability discussed by Kolmorogov, Arnold and Moser, by Ford, and by many others. In following these developments, one can see the initial development of many of the new and now standard techniques of nonlinear modeling and numerical simulation. No other text focuses so tightly and covers so completely one specific, pernicious problem at the heart of dynamics.