I'm trying to put short math expressions in my chapters or sections like this:

\chapter{Basic topological concepts in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ }


The problem is that headers seem to ignore the math part and I can't find a workaround. Obviously I don't want to use an alternative title.

I'm working with the tufte-book class which can be found at this page or the official site.

This code will reproduce the problem:

 \documentclass{tufte-book}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amsthm}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\begin{document}
\mainmatter
\chapter{This chapter title $\mathbb{R}^{n}$}
\newpage
another page
\newpage
\end{document}


Edit: I forget that I made little changes in the fonts to the tufte-book class. In the original one the problem still happen but instead of showing a "\" it doesn't show anything:

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Welcome to TeX.SX! Can you supply a minimal working example (MWE)? Under normal settings with the book class there should be no problem; perhaps you're meaning that the superscript is capitalized? – egreg Apr 5 '14 at 22:28
Sorry, my bad! The superscript capitalized is a problem in the default book class now that I'm having a look, but not in the "tufte-book" one. – texdditor Apr 5 '14 at 23:04

The tufte-book class makes all headers lowercase, so the R becomes r and the blackboard bold font has no lowercase R.

As a solution you can do

\documentclass{tufte-book}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amsthm}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\DeclareRobustCommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}}

\begin{document}
\mainmatter
\chapter{This chapter title $\R^{n}$}
\newpage
another page
\newpage
\end{document}


But, in general, uppercase math letters will need to be protected in a similar way. For a small number of titles containing math it's just a nuisance.

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Thank you so much! – texdditor Apr 5 '14 at 23:19
sigh. that running head shows one of the problems with putting math in titles. running heads really should be set in small caps for best appearance, but uppercase math really fouls up the appearance with its relatively much larger size. best to avoid math in titles altogether, but since it's really not possible, then using all uppercase in a smaller size, visually a size comparable to small caps, is about the only option left. then apply \MakeTextUppercase rather than the basic \uppercase. (that's what is done in the ams document classes.) – barbara beeton Apr 6 '14 at 2:07
@barbarabeeton I agree, although all caps is not the same as small caps (if these glyphs are drawn properly). An alternative is to use normal case, maybe adding some ornament like a small rule or bullet between the running title and the page number for visually distinguishing the header. – egreg Apr 6 '14 at 8:46
@egreg -- absolutely true, not at all the same. but publishers of math journals are very conservative -- they've been using "uppercase" forever. (when composition was in metal, they may have used the proper small caps, just setting the very occasional math in a smaller size; i don't know, and there's nobody still around to ask.) – barbara beeton Apr 6 '14 at 12:26