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newsletter - New Zealand Mathematical Society

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There are two chapters on wound healing, dermal and epidermal. Although wound healing is still far from<br />

well understood, Murray argues that studying mathematical models of the process can only help, in<br />

highlighting gaps in our knowledge and suggesting experiments to perform, the ultimate goal being<br />

scarless healing. Also, constructing a model forces one to choose between several possible mechanisms<br />

and to decide what is truly essential, both in terms of variables and processes —an important skill for any<br />

modeller.<br />

Other chapters deal with the growth of brain tumours, pattern formation in neural systems, and wolf pack<br />

territoriality. I was disappointed that the chapter on neural pattern formation has not been updated for this<br />

edition, save for the addition of several pages on "shamanism and rock art'' in which Murray discusses the<br />

apparent similarities between children's scribblings, images on rocks that have been painted by ancient<br />

people—perhaps under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs—and the patterns that occur in some neural<br />

models under the variation of a parameter. While this is interesting, it would have been better to<br />

summarise some of the results in this active field from the past 15 years.<br />

This volume alone is a large book, with more than 800 pages and a similar number of references. There<br />

are 14 chapters, 8 of which are new. These new chapters largely describe the work done by Murray and<br />

his students over the past ten years. As a consequence, this volume sometimes seems a little like a<br />

"collected works''. However, it is a valuable collection of results from different areas of mathematical<br />

biology.<br />

In summary, much of this volume consists of applications of reaction-diffusion equations to biological<br />

systems, with plenty of explanation as to their biological context and subsequent analysis of the<br />

equations. There is much in both volumes to keep an applied mathematician busy. Combined, they would<br />

provide ample material for an advanced course on mathematical modelling, nonlinear dynamics, or<br />

mathematical biology.<br />

References<br />

[1] J. D. Murray. <strong>Mathematical</strong> Biology (2nd, corrected edition). Springer –Verlag, 1993.<br />

Carlo Laing<br />

Massey University, Albany<br />

SET THEORY<br />

The third millennium edition, revised and expanded, by Thomas Jech, Springer Monographs in<br />

Mathematics,<br />

Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003, 769 pp, US$129.00. ISBN 3-540-44085-2<br />

Jech's book, "Set theory" (Academic Press, <strong>New</strong> York, 1978) has been a standard reference for over 25<br />

years. This "Third Millennium Edition", not only includes all the materials in the first two editions, but<br />

also covers recent developments of set theory during the last 25 years. We believe that this new version<br />

will become a standard reference on set theory for the next few years.<br />

The book is divided into three parts. Part I, Basic Set Theory, includes the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of<br />

set theory, ordinals and cardinals, real numbers, the axiom of choice, fundamentals of combinatorial set<br />

theory, a brief introduction of large cardinals, Borel and analytic sets, and basics of models of set theory.<br />

Everything in this part is derived from scratch. However, the pace is so fast that a beginner should have<br />

read other introductions to set theory before reading this book.<br />

Part II, Advanced Set Theory, contains the important techniques and ideas of modern set theory. This part<br />

can be used as a textbook on set theory for graduate students. Chapter 13 introduces Gödel's theory of<br />

constructible sets, which leads to the consistency proofs for the axiom of choice and the GCH<br />

(generalized continuum hypothesis). Chapter 14 deals with forcing, generic models, Boolean-valued<br />

models, and Cohen's independence results. In Chapters 15 and 16, the author applies forcing to Suislin's<br />

problem, and presents several applications of Martin's Axiom. Chapters 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 provide an<br />

extensive exposition of large cardinals. In Chapter 17, the author shows that while "smaller" large<br />

cardinals (Mahlo, weakly compact) can exist in L, the Gödel's constructible universe, the " bigger" large<br />

cardinals (measurable, Ramsey) cannot. Chapter 18 introduces the concept of 0 # (zero-sharp), and gives<br />

an outline of the proof of Jensen's covering theorem. Chapter 19 is on the generic ultrapowers and inner<br />

models for sequences of measures. Chapter 20 is devoted to the study of the strongly compact cardinals,<br />

the supercompact cardinals and extenders, and also introduces the Woodin cardinals, all of which have<br />

played crucial roles in the theory of large cardinals. In Chapter 21, the author presents several forcing<br />

techniques, like Kunen-Paris forcing, Silver forcing, Prikry forcing, etc., which are used for changing<br />

cofinalities, and for violating Singular Cardinal Hypothesis that use large cardinals. Chapters 22 and 23<br />

are devoted to the results on saturated ideals, precipitousness and saturation of the nonstationary ideals. In

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