This book is dedicated to problems involving colored objects, and to results about the existence of certain exciting and unexpected properties that occur regardless of how these objects are colored. In mathematics, these results comprise the beautiful area known as Ramsey Theory. Ramsey Theory includes parts of many fields of mathematics, including combinatorics, geometry, and number theory. This book addresses famous and exciting problems of Ramsey Theory, along with the history surrounding the discovery of Ramsey Theory. In addition, the author studies the life of Issai Schur, Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet and B.L. van der Waerden. Due to the author's correspondence with van der Waerden, Erdös, and Schur, this book contains material that has never before been published. Historians of mathematics will herein find much new information, along with old errors corrected and published here for the first time in book form.

Alexander Soifer is a Russian born and educated American mathematician, a professor of mathematics at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, an author of some 400 articles on mathematics, history of mathematics, mathematics education, film reviews, etc. and has published 9 books with Springer. From 2012–2018, he served as President of the World Federation of National Mathematics Competitions, which in 2006 awarded him The Paul Erdős Award.  In 1991 Soifer founded a research quarterly titled Geombinatorics and with a premier editorial board has published 130 issues over 33 years. Soifer founded The Colorado Mathematical Olympiad, and served on both USSR and USA Mathematical Olympiads committees. Soifer’s Erdős number is 1.