The Mathematics Devotional: Celebrating the Wisdom and Beauty of Mathematics

by Clifford A. Pickover

“It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.” —Sofia Kovalevskaya, Recollections of Childhood , 1895   From the ingenious author of The Math Book and The Physics Book comes an inspirational volume that celebrates the beauty and wisdom of mathematics. Every page of this yearlong devotional presents a sage remark alongside a stunning image relating to the world of math. The quotes offer insight from such brilliant thinkers as Pythagoras, Richard Feynman, and Robert Heinlein, and the art showcases everything from gorgeous fractals to splendid architecture. The calendar also includes the birthdays of notable mathematicians, so readers can see which ones share theirs. A brief biographical dictionary provides additional information on the people whose wonderful words appeared through the book.

Genres: Mathematics, Science, Nonfiction, Philosophy

392 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 2014

About the author

Clifford Alan Pickover is an American author, editor, and columnist in the fields of science, mathematics, science fiction, innovation, and creativity. For many years, he was employed at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York, where he was editor-in-chief of the IBM Journal of Research and Development. He has been granted more than 700 U.S. patents, is an elected Fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and is author of more than 50 books, translated into more than a dozen languages.

Reviews

[WarpDrive · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty nice little book containing some nice quotes and beautiful images of fractals.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mathematics Devotional is unlike any other book on math. It is a collection of quotes, fed in daily doses, meant to inspire and illuminate the mind with the inherent artistic beauty of mathematics. The quotes range from people like Einstein, Richard Feynman, Edgar Allen Poe, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Haruki Murakami, to Pythagoras. With a lineup like that and over three hundred more, quote-junkies better come into this with their life jacket equipped.

As I mentioned earlier, this book aims to provide an artistic understanding of mathematical beauty through aesthetically pleasing images (one for each day of the year). No knowledge of integrals, algebra, proofs, geometry, spirals, calculus, tessellations, fractals, etc. is needed, though as a student of math myself, I did find deeper meaning to many of the images and quotes; needless to say it is unnecessary to enjoy.

If there's a book that you must read about mathematics this year, especially if you are mathematically anxious, then by all means make it be this book. For all the quote-freaks out there, this shall be your daily scripture--it's even dated for each day for mathematics' sake. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I thank the author for meshing art and math together in a way that anyone can appreciate. I love math and art; this book is for individuals like myself.

[Kathleen Garber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love math so when I saw this I thought it would be great. A way to think about math every day of the year. It’s a beautiful book with full colour pages and beautiful mathematical art. However the quotes were way above my understanding.

I got As in math and do math questions for fun on my own as an adult. I own a shelf of math books and I love math. So when I say they are above my understanding, it’s not because I struggle with math. These are quotes from mathematicians and honestly, for mathematicians.

Example of a quote that I understood and enjoyed:

“Mathematics is as much part of our cultural heritage as art, literature, and music. As humans, we have a hunger to discover something new, reach new meaning, understand better the universe and our place in it.”
Originally Edward Frenkel, Love and Math 2013 but quoted in The Mathematics Devotional

This is an example of the types of quotes that had me lost:

“A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres, solid as a crystal, yet through all its mass flow, as through empty space, music and light… Sphere within sphere; and every space between, peopled with unimaginable shapes, such as ghosts dream, dwell in the lampless deep.”
Originally Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, 1820 but quoted in The Mathematics Devotional

Huh?

Although there are some that confuse me, there are still many quotes that I liked. It’s a good book, but it is better for those who are taking or have taken college level math or are otherwise geniuses in math.

[James Lancelot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pickover introduces this devotional as "a way of providing glimpses of mathematics and aesthetics—presenting wisdom and poetry in brief". His other goal is to include "some mathematical 'eye candy' in the form of computer graphics, hopefully inspiring readers to learn more about the universe of mathematics and the delights that mathematicians, artists, and computer programmers feel in exploring mathematics." And the pictures are a very large part of this book's value. (Some of them are worth staring at for a few minutes to see what they're all about. There are a lot of fractals.)

My main gripe with this book is that its description on Goodreads and Amazon is completely misleading in one respect. They said, "The calendar also includes the birthdays of notable mathematicians, so readers can see which ones share theirs." Which sounded like most of the days of the year would have their corresponding mathematician's birthday. But most of the calendar days don't, and I counted 101 days of this devotional that included a mathematician's birthday. So 2/3rds of readers will be unable see which mathematicians share their birthday.

The quotes and the picture might make up for that deficiency though.

[Diane Henry]

Via Jennifer Oulette

[Bill Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great fun exploring this book of quotes by famous mathematicians and others.

[Mills College Library]

510 P5977 2014