Frank Y. Wang http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.2671.pdf
The general public has been made aware of the research field of Chaos
by the book of that title by James Gleick.1 Since the publication of that best seller in 1987, the term ―chaos‖ has become a trendy word, and the title of the leading chapter ―butterfly effect‖ is a household name. While the idea of chaos seemed to emerge recently, it actually arose from the prize-winning work of one of the greatest mathematicians of the late nineteenth century—Henri Poincaré (1854–1912). Poincaré’s 1890 memoir on the three-body problem was the result of his entry in King Oscar II of Sweden’s 60th birthday competition. The Russian mathematician, Sonya Kovalevskaya (1850–1891), then a professor of the University of Stockholm, was consulted in the offering of the prize. About the same time, she finished her own celebrated work on the motion of a rigid body.2 From today’s point of view, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the works of Poincaré and Kovalevskaya hinted at the failure of Newtonian determinism by using Newton’s own laws. The implication is that chaos is ubiquitous.
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