Websites on Plane Curves

This page is a list of relatively large websites on plane curves. Sites on specific curves will be found at the bottom of each curve's page. Note that online info or free stuff are often not reliable and poor quality. Commercialized info such as books are in general more reliable.

For printed references, see: Plane Curves Books .

Math of Curves

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia contributed by users. It is a general encyclopedia, but contains signifcant amount professionally-written math articles. As of 2008-03, I regard the quality and scope of Wikipedia to be far superior than any existing encyclopedia, all things considered. (including, for example, in comparison to Britannica.) Also, even if we limit to mathematics, I regard Wikipedia to be far superior to any single existing math reference works out there, including the authorative Encyclopedic Dictionary Of Mathematics published by MIT Press, judged on the combination of quality and quanity of info. You may start at List of curve topics, Differential Geometry, Algebraic Geometry.

For more about my assertion on Wikipedia's quality, see: Encyclopedia, My Experiences. 2007 .

MathWorld

Wolfram Research Inc's MathWorld is work by Eric Weisstein and sponsored by Wolfram Research. This is a good general reference math resource on the web. Every curve on my site has a entry there. Be warned that the info at MathWorld.com are often incorrect or misleading. (as of 2006-06)

Wolfram Research also has other very useful and interesting math sites.

MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

This is one of the most complete history of mathematics site on the net, written by professors from University of St Andrews, Scotland.

This site contains a section devoted to special plane curves: Famous Curves Index, with Java applets for interactive exploration. Links to biographies of related mathematicians are well integrated in the description of each curve.

Misc

Jan Wassenaar's Mathematical Curves. A large site dedicated to plane curves.

http://serge.mehl.free.fr/base/index_cbe.html This site in French contains about 71 curves. Its author is Serge MEHL. It includes figures and animations and photographs. Well done.

Online Text Books

“A Modern Course on Curves and Surfaces”, by Richard S Palais (UC Irvine), 2003: http://virtualmathmuseum.org/Surface/a/bk/curves_surfaces_palais.pdf