Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of ...

Abstract We solve the Cauchy problem for the n-dimensional wave equation using elementary properties of the Fourier transform. The Monthly publishes articles, as well as notes and other features, ...

But Fourier transforms are the workhorses in many modern fields of science, including data processing, image analysis, optics, communication, astronomy and engineering.