Michael Spivak

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Michael David Spivak is a mathematician specializing in differential geometry, an expositor of mathematics, and the founder of Publish-or-Perish Press. He is the author of the monumental five-volume Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University under the supervision of John Milnor in 1964.

His plainly titled Calculus takes a very rigorous and theoretical approach to introductory calculus. (He does not actually start from the basic properties and axioms of the set of real numbers; rather axioms of ordered fields are introduced in an epilogue.) It has been traditionally used in the honors freshman calculus course at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, CIMAT, Universidad de Guanajuato, Reed College, the Trinity College Dublin, Universidad de Sinaloa, the University of Oregon, the University of Rochester, the Ohio State University, the University Of Georgia, the Advanced section at the University of Waterloo and the Introductory Analysis (first year) course at the the University of Toronto.

Spivak has also written Joy of TeX: A Gourmet Guide to Typesetting With the AMS-TeX Macro Package and The Hitchhiker's Guide to Calculus. The famous book Morse Theory, by John Milnor, was based on lecture notes by Spivak and Robert Wells. His book Calculus on Manifolds is also widely admired.

In each of his books he has hidden references to yellow pigs, an idea he apparently came up with at a bar while drinking with David C. Kelly.

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