What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

Any hint for...

Quality historical fiction to do with mathematics?
Biographies of mathematicians that read like novels (like A Beautiful Mind)?

Thanks! S.

Sanderm, it sounds like you are looking for books in general so I am moving your request there.

I recommend My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance. A physicist went to work in finance on Wall Street and this is his memoir. Well written and interesting.

John Banville wrote 3 books that might be of interest, they're known as the Revolutions Trilogy and are called Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter.

You might like Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time by Dava Sobel.

Wikipedia has a good list of mathematical fiction books, and Goodreads has a list of popular math fiction; you might find something there.

Thank you all!

Would Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love fit your request?

There is Measuring the World, it's historical fiction. I can't say I liked it, but one of the main characters is Gauss if you want to try

The mathematician Stan Ulam brushed shoulders with some of the same celebrities as Nash from A Beautiful Mind. He had quite the interesting life and his autobiography Adventures of a Mathematician is well written and engaging.

I can also recommend the biographies of a couple of contemporary mathematicians: Fermat's Enigma and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. The first is actually quite a bit more than just Andrew Wiles' story, but that was probably my favorite part of it, the way the book explains the inner quest and struggles of a remarkable modern mathematician. The second is the story of a modern legend, and it's both funny, sad and fascinating. Another biography exists on the formidable Erdös, My Brain Is Open, but I haven't read it yet.

I know a couple of books on Turing: Alan Turing: The Enigma and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan is intriguing, and then, The French Mathematician is a very fictionalized story of Evariste Galois.

Also, I've always been fond of A Mathematician's Apology

Speaking of Turing, there's also Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe.

Not quite what you were looking for (it's nonfiction), but I loved this one, it's unforgettable.


The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty by K.C. Cole

On the surface it may not appear to be about maths, but ultimately it is The Stockholm Octavo

The Three Body Problem has a female mathematican as I recall...set late 1800s/early 1900s England...I think...

Went to double-check the book and came across this link of fiction & math:

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFI...

This was not one of my favorites, but seems to be similar to what you are looking for! Finding Emilie