num_pages: 284
description: Duels battlefield heroism secret societies theft imprisonment and feuds fill the pages of A Strange Wilderness. As exciting as any action/adventure novel this is actually the story of incredible individuals and engrossing tales behind the most profound enduring mathematical theorems.Archimedes famously ran naked through the streets shouting Eureka eureka! after finding a method for measuring the volume of an irregular-shaped object. Ren Descartes was not only a great French mathematician philosopher physicist and natural scientist; he was also an expert swordsman who traveled with European armies from town to town dressed in green taffeta and accompanied by a valet. Georg Cantor grappled with mental illness as he explored the highly counterintuitive bizarre properties of infinite sets and numbers. Emmy Noether struggled to find employment as she laid the mathematical groundwork for modern theoretical physics. And Alexander Grothendieck taught himself mathematics while interned in Nazi concentration camps only to disappear into the Pyrenees at the zenith of his career.These are just a few stories recounted in this absorbing narrative. In probing the lives of the preeminent mathematicians in history a Strange Wilderness will leave you entertained and enlightened with a newfound appreciation of the tenacity complexity and brilliance of the mathematical genius.
language: English
title: A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of the Great Mathematicians
publisher: Union Square & Co.