Serge Lang and his books
September 28th, 2005 by WaltAs probably most of you have heard by this point, Serge Lang has passed away. He is most famous for his very many math textbooks. My impression was that most people were not fans of his books, but the discussion at Not Even Wrong was much more positive. What do you think? Have you read any of his books? Liked them? Hated them?
September 29th, 2005 at 10:48 pm
I seem to recall an orange book by Lang entitled Algebra. The book was a little tattered, the binding falling apart and the pages a little loose. I also remember complaining quite a bit about this book. Lang had a tendency to rename things like integral domain. In fact, I half-joked he tried to rename multiplication. For that reason, I hated Lang’s books. I am sad that he died though.
September 30th, 2005 at 9:52 am
I hate this book with a passion. The purpose of a textbook is the imparting of knowledge. If you learned mathematics in a vacuum (or even perhaps in the vaccum milieu of Lang books) then fine, but if you already know some math (and what everyone else calls things) then this book useless. (Hey thanks Serge, your index is pointless)
October 12th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
i also found lang’s _algebra_ useless as a first-year student.
but forget the blue million *math* books: lang was a national treasure
for his amazingly persistent debunkings of bureaucratic b.s.
(in and out of the academy — but especially “in”).
here’s my review of _challenges_:
http://members.aol.com/vlorbik/tenpage/lang.html
June 30th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Hello,
I was a good friend of Serge in the early 1970s when he would travel to California for seminars at Stanford. I took the photo on the cover of one of his books; a dandelion in orange tones. I was 15 at the time.
I would like to communicate with someone about Serge.
Michael
June 30th, 2007 at 8:03 am
It’s rather an old post to bump, but what about him?
July 4th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
[...] thread for anyone who has anything on their mind while I find an alternative. Michael Costantini asked in this old thread if anyone was interested in talking about Serge Lang. Michael knew him back in the [...]