Selected papers. Volumes 1, 2. Ed. by Robert R. Kallman (Q1086553)

These two volumes contain Shizuo Kakutani's own selection of number of papers that highlights his prolific career in creative mathematics. They contain most of his papers up to 1981. But Kakutani's papers written in Japanese language were not included in these two volumes. There are ten chapters in these two volumes. They have been arranged by topic to illustrate the approximate chronological order of Kakutani's work and ideas. The ordering is somewhat arbitrary due to the fact that very often Kakutani worked on very different topics at the same time. However the ten chapters are as follows: (1) Complex analysis, (2) Topological groups, (3) Fixed point theorem, (4) Banach spaces and Hilbert spaces, (5) Markov process, (6) Measure theory, (7) Flows, (8) Brownian motion, (9) Ergodic theory, (10) Miscellaneous. Each chapter is followed by detailed commentaries which can be found at the end of each volume. Beside these chapters there are six other sections under the headings (i) Editor's preface, (ii) Bibliography of Shizuo Kakutani, (iii) Collaborators with Shizuo Kakutani, (iv) Doctoral students of Shizuo Kakutani, (v) A biographical sketch, (vi) Acknowledgements. The book is an excellent exposition of the selected aspects of Kakutani. It can be a useful addition to the collection of books by a mathematician as well as a historian of mathematics. The editor has done a great service to the mathematical community and the community for historian of mathematics by writing and editing these two volumes and filling a gap in the history of modern mathematics. It is true that very often the works of a mathematician are in a scattered state, published in diffuse forms and inaccessible. In bringing together these works and papers into organized, annotated volumes, there is a unique opportunity for historical, biographical and mathematical perspective to emerge. Birkhäuser (Boston, Basel, Stuttgart) deserves all the praise for bringing out the collected works of the outstanding mathematician Kakutani.