SOURCE: “Chaos, Rigor, and Hype,” in Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer, 1989, pp. 6–8.

In the following essay, Hirsch objects to Gleick's misrepresentation of chaos theory in Chaos and his failure to focus on the contributions of mathematicians, particularly Stephen Smale, toward a scientific understanding of chaos.

Gleick's book Chaos [reviewed by John Franks, Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 11, no. 1, 1989] captures vividly and faithfully the personalities of the researchers, the atmosphere they worked in, and the spirit of the times (as far as I can tell—I don't know all the people in the book), as well as skillfully expounding many fascinating themes of current research.

But to my mind the book has one great defect: It doesn't do justice to the rigorous mathematics underlying a great deal of the research in nonlinear dynamical systems. In fact a nonmathematician or even a mathematician unfamiliar with the material would find it hard to...