This book is dedicated to problems involving colored objects, and to results about the existence of certain exciting and unexpected properties that occur regardless of how these objects are colored. In mathematics, these results comprise the beautiful area known as Ramsey Theory. Wolfram’s Math World defines Ramsey Theory as "the mathematical study of combinatorial objects in which a certain degree of order must occur as the scale of the object becomes large." Ramsey Theory thus includes parts of many fields of mathematics, including combinatorics, geometry, and number theory. This book addresses famous and exciting problems of Ramsey Theory, along with the history surrounding the discovery of Ramsey Theory. In addition, the author studies the life of Issai Schur, Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet and B.L. van der Waerden. In researching this book over the past 14 years, the author corresponded extensively with B.L. van der Waerden, Paul Erdos, Henry Baudet, and many others. As a result, this book will incorporate never before published correspondence and photographs.
Historians of mathematics will herein find much new information, along with old errors corrected and published here for the first time in book form. And everyone will experience seeing, for the first time, faces one has not seen before in print, on rare and unique photographs of the creators of the mathematics presented herein, from Francis Guthrie to Frank Ramsey, and documents, such as the one where Adolph Hitler commits a "micromanagement" of firing the Jew, Issai Schur from his job as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Berlin.