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Brazzaville beach |
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William Boyd features
another mad mathematician in his novel who
discovers chaos theory only to find he has
been beaten to it. Nice description of the
poetry of mathematics.
(photo: © 1996-2002, Amazon.com, Inc).
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The glass bead game |
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Hermann Hesse’s
classic novel describes an intellectual game
where all the intellectual disciplines are
brought together. In particular there is a
description of the dialogue between maths
and music in the game. Prof John Wilson of
Birmingham University has tried to play the
game translating mathematics into music.
(photo: © 1996-2003, Amazon.com, Inc.) |
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Contact |
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Contact by Carl Sagan
- is full of mathematical vignettes. In particular
the primes as a way to communicate between
aliens and humans.
(photo:© 1996-2003, Amazon.com, Inc.) |
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Ratner's star |
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Ratner’s Star
by Don Dellilo, one of his very first novels,
also explores the idea of a mathematical message
from outer space.
(photo:© 1996-2003, Amazon.com, Inc.) |
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Cryptomonicon |
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Cryptonomicon by Neal
Stephenson – features Turing’s
machine to generate zeros of the Riemann zeta
function and ultimately the coded messages
in the book turn out be nothing but the locations
of the first few zeros in Riemann’s
landscape.
(photo: © 1996-2003, Amazon.com, Inc.) |
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The man who mistook his
wife for a hat |
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The story of two twins
is told by neurosurgeon Oliver Sacks. The
twins communicated by swapping prime numbers.
(photo: © 1996-2003, Amazon.com, Inc.) |
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