36
$\begingroup$

What are some fiction books about mathematicians?

It seems to me rather difficult for writers to create good books on this subject. Some years ago I thought there were no such books at all. There are many reasons: it is difficult to describe the process of discovery and describe it in the exciting way. The subject has narrow audience and not the way to make best-seller...

Comments on how authors try to avoid these problems are also welcome. The movie "A Beautiful Mind" is a (beautiful for me) example, where the story of mathematician was mixed with love and spy stories to make it interesting for general audience, well not so much preserved from mathematician's story, but nevertheless I am quite positive about it.

Here is a related MO question:

Movies about mathematics mathematicians

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
15
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ I think 'other scientists' should be removed; or at least it should be narrowed down to 'scientists in closely related fields'. To collect books featuring, say, a microbiologist seems totally off-topic for MO to me. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Jul 8, 2012 at 11:43
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ I'm going to take the liberty of removing "scientists" from the question since there are way too many books about scientists to ask for a list, and it makes more sense to ask about books featuring mathematicians on MO. $\endgroup$
    – Douglas Zare
    Jul 8, 2012 at 20:59
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ It is perhaps worth pointing out that while the movie "A Beautiful Mind" was fictionalized in many ways, the book it is based on is non-fiction. It is an (as far as I could tell) well-researched biography of the very real John Nash. $\endgroup$
    – Noah Stein
    Jul 9, 2012 at 14:38
  • 13
    $\begingroup$ Mathematicians should not do, and certainly not enjoy, anything other than mathematical research, lest they give themselves away as human beings with a variety of interests and not a 100% devotion to just the one. $\endgroup$
    – Sridhar Ramesh
    Jul 10, 2012 at 16:43
  • 9
    $\begingroup$ "Time spent reading is time not not used for doing research." @Harry: are you an intuitionist? $\endgroup$
    – Margaret Friedland
    Jul 10, 2012 at 17:52

65 Answers 65

Reset to default
1 2
3
0
$\begingroup$

According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno, Giordano Bruno was a mathematician, among other things, and S J Parris has written three excellent novels (and counting ..) that feature Bruno as the main character as a detective and secret agent combined:

https://www.amazon.com/Heresy-S-J-Parris/dp/0385531281

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prophecy-Giordano-Bruno-S-Parris/dp/0007317735

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sacrilege-Giordano-Bruno-S-Parris/dp/000731776X

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

Not a book, but a play: "Descartes and Pascal", about a historical encounter of these two mathematicians. It was in part translated into Polish and I remember reading it in this version. I could not recall the name of the author. Googling gives Jean De Clouse, by a reference to a stage version in Marathi:

Written by Jean De Clouse and translated into Marathi by Madhuri Purandare, the play's subject derives from a historical meeting between philosopher-mathematician Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, a mathematician, physicist and philosopher himself. This meeting took place on 23rd September 1646.

If someone could confirm or correct the authorship or/and the title, he/she is welcome. There are other references to the meeting on the web, but not to the play:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/when-blaise-pascal-met-rene-descartes-1337242.html

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

La conjecture de Syracuse, by Antoine Billot (in French).

This novel is about a fictional mathematician having solved the Collatz conjecture in his youth and whose career will be put at risk by a young student competing with him.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

Rymdväktaren and Nyaga are (admittedly Swedish language) sci-fi books that feature 5-6 mathematicians in the main cast as well as one supercomputer.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

  1. Arno Schmidt's characters sometimes are occupied with mathematics, although mostly as a tool for geodesy or astronomy. A notable instance of pure mathematics occurs in the novelette Schwarze Spiegel (1951): The narrator, believing he is the last man on earth after a nuclear world war, kills time by "proving" Fermat's last theorem -- he even claims that the proof generalises to a proof of Euler's conjecture. Not surprisingly, the "proof", which consists of elementary manipulations, is flawed in several ways -- what it does give is a distorted version of Euclid's formula for Pythagorean triples. (It is not clear to me whether the narrator actually believes in his proof.)

  2. A chaos theorist is a main protagonist of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990), and a popularised version of chaos theory serves as an idea in the plot. Less so in the movie Spielberg made of it.

  3. One chapter in László Krasznahorkai's From North a Hill, from South a Lake, from East a Road, from West a River (2003) consists of a description of a fictitious work The infinite, a mistake, written by one (little less fictitious) "Sir Wilford Stanley Gilmore". It is said that the book's imprint mentions "a small town called Bures-sur-Yvette and the Gilmore-Grothendieck-Nelson-Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques". I will not spoil any more except that it ends with a rant against Georg Cantor. Update: Nearly ten years after I recommended it, this novel has finally appeared in English translation, with the title A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East . I still recommend it.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1 2
3

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.