 |
21 (2008) |
 | Robert Luketic (Director) |
|
As I understand it, the book by Ben Mezrich which inspired this film is non-fiction. It told the true story (though using pseudonyms) of a team comprised of an MIT math professor and six MIT students... (more) |
|
 |
The 39 Steps (1935) |
 | Alfred Hitchcock (director) |
|
Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller follows the getaway of Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), a man accused of murder. While Hannay must outsmart the police in his escape, he also finds himself sought... (more) |
|
|
7 Steps to Midnight (1993) |
|
| Richard Matheson |
|
In this unnerving, `Kafka-esque' suspense novel by well known horror author Richard Matheson, a government mathematician sees reality collapse around him as his life is turned into a surrealistic version... (more) |
|
|
The Alice Network (2017) |
|
| Kate Quinn |
|
Set in the aftermath of World War II, The Alice Network follows a Bennington College sophomore Charlotte “Charlie” St. Clair on an impromptu search for her cherished cousin Rose. While fleeing... (more) |
|
|
All Cry Chaos (2011) |
|
| Leonard Rosen |
|
When a mathematician is killed in an explosion immediately before presenting his paper on the inevitability of a one-world economy to the World Trade Organization, the case falls to Interpol agent Henri... (more) |
|
|
Altar of Eden (2009) |
|
| James Rollins |
|
"Fractals" is the buzz word in this adventure novel in which a veterinarian discovers seemingly mutated animals who were unwittingly brought back to the US by Black Market traders. Including vague references... (more) |
|
|
The Amazing Spider-Man (Issues 555-557) (2008) |
|
| Zeb Wells (writer) / Chris Bachalo (penciller) |
|
The issue of Amazing Spider-Man entitled "Sometimes it Snows in April" introduces a disheveled mathematician named Benjamin Rabin who appears to be the victim of an attempted assault. He explains to police... (more) |
|
|
The Amber Shadows (2016) |
|
| Lucy Ribchester |
|
This is another thriller set at Bletchley Park during World War II. Many of the characters are described as mathematicians and Alan Turing is mentioned occasionally, but math is definitely not the center... (more) |
|
|
The Anomaly [L'Anomalie] (2020) |
|
| Hervé Le Tellier |
|
This award-winning French novel offers an interesting twist on the now familiar science fiction trope of an airplane mysteriously re-appearing long after it has vanished. In this version, the international... (more) |
|
|
Arcadia (2016) |
|
| Iain Pears |
|
As this clever novel is intentionally a hodge-podge of genres, it is a bit difficult to describe. It involves a British spy brought back from retirement in the 1960s to find a mole, a mathematician in... (more) |
|
|
Babirusa (2022) |
|
| Arula Ratnakar |
|
One can briefly summarize this story without mentioning anything about mathematics: It concerns ethically questionable experiments conducted by a company called REMedy that link people through a “dream... (more) |
|
|
The Bank (2001) |
|
| Robert Connolly |
|
A brilliant young mathematician (aren't they all!) uses chaos theory to develop a mathematical model that predicts the stock market in this Australian thriller (co-produced by Axiom Films) .
I love... (more) |
|
|
The Blind Geometer (1987) |
|
| Kim Stanley Robinson |
|
This short novel lives up to its name: it really is about a blind
geometer! Carlos Oleg Nevsky was born blind and ``since 2043'' has
been a professor of mathematics at GWU. We get some interesting
discussion... (more) |
|
|
Bone Chase (2020) |
|
| Weston Ochse |
|
Ethan McCloud discovers a massive conspiracy to hide a historical truth in an thriller that combines science and the Bible.
In this unsubtle attempt to create a new entry in the genre which achieved... (more) |
|
|
The Boy Who Escaped Paradise (2016) |
|
| J.M. Lee (author) / Chi-Young Kim (translator) |
|
After a body is found surrounded by mathematical formulas in Queens, a young Korean man named Gil-Mo is arrested for the murder. Because of his autistic tendencies, he does not respond at all to the usual... (more) |
|
|
The Brink of Infinity (1936) |
|
| Stanley G. Weinbaum |
|
A
mathematics professor is kidnapped by a madman with a grudge against
mathematicians, who threatens dire consequences unless the prof can
solve a math riddle he has concocted: by asking ten questions,... (more) |
|
|
Burn Notice (Episode: Signals and Codes) (2009) |
|
| Jason Tracey (screenplay) / Jeremiah Chechik (director) |
|
Presumably, each episode of this old TV series features ex-CIA agent Michael Westen catching some "bad guys" in the hope of being re-accepted by his former employer. (I say "presumably" because I've... (more) |
|
|
A Calculated Man (2022) |
|
| Paul Tobin (writer) / Alberto Alburquerque (artist) |
|
An accountant for the mob, now in witness protection, must defend himself from his former employers, but with the power of math on his side he is quite capable of killing those who have been sent to eliminate... (more) |
|
|
The Chimera Prophesies (2007) |
|
| Elliott Ostler |
|
A mathematician known only as ``#6'', while trying to come up with a model that would predict probabilities for different human behaviors, finds that in fact he can very nearly predict the future with... (more) |
|
|
The Cipher (2015) |
|
| John C. Ford |
|
As he turns 18, the son of the billionaire who owns the patent on public-key encryption finds himself in several complicated situations. There is a love triangle involving both his long-time girlfriend... (more) |
|
|
Cliff Walk (1987) |
|
| Margaret Dickson |
|
This novel which alternates between being a melancholy character study and thriller, tells the story of a woman named Crelly, from her childhood in a family torn apart by abuse and tragedy, to the separation... (more) |
|
|
Cobra (2022) |
|
| R. Ajay Gnanamuthu (Director) / Kannan (Screenplay) / Sekar Neelan (Screenplay) |
|
This picaresque Indian film focuses on a powerful crime lord named Cobra who also happens to be a mathematical genius known as "Mathi". It is ambitious in its three-hour length and its attempt to combine... (more) |
|
|
Code to Zero (2000) |
|
| Ken Follett |
|
This thriller is set in 1958, with backdrop the first successful launching
of a US satellite. Several of the characters are mathematicians turned
rocket scientists. They frequently muse rather explicitly... (more) |
|
|
The Company of Strangers (2001) |
|
| Robert Wilson |
|
A bittersweet romance/thriller about a young woman mathematician in
Portugal spying for the British during World War II. There is a lot of
interesting stuff in this novel if you're looking at the romance... (more) |
|
|
Comrades in Miami (2005) |
|
| Jose Latour |
|
Colonel Victoria Valiente is an important figure in the Communist party of Cuba. However, her husband is a famous mathematician, Manuel Pardo. Manuel's job allows him to travel widely and he becomes... (more) |
|
|
The Crimson Cipher (2010) |
|
| Susan Page Davis |
|
A code breaker seeks to solve the mystery of the murder of her father, a math professor who had been working on an encryption device at the beginning of World War I in this "Christian adventure/romance". (more) |
|
|
Critical Point (2020) |
|
| S.L. Huang |
|
This is the third novel featuring Cas Russell, a private detective with superhuman mathematical abilities that allow her to fight with remarkable precision, and to quickly survey a crime scene.
There... (more) |
|
|
Cryptonomicon (1998) |
|
| Neal Stephenson |
|
This "cult" novel of mathematics, computer science, espionage and
warfare follows a mathematician through World War II and his grandson
through the creation of a (less than ordinary) silicon valley start-up
company.... (more) |
|
|
The Da Vinci Code (2003) |
|
| Dan Brown |
|
The last act of a dying curator at the Louvre is an attempt to pass on, in code, a secret that he did not want to take to the grave. Among the things needed to "decode" this secret message is a recognition... (more) |
|
|
Deception (2003) |
|
| Eric Altman |
|
The differential geometer who has discovered a formula for the lifetime of tiny black holes is the only decent character in this book. That is not to say that the others are poorly written, just that... (more) |
|
|
Decoded (2002) |
|
| Mai Jia |
|
This novel tells the story of Rong Jinzhen, a mathematical genius who becomes a cryptographer in Mao's secret intelligence agency.
The author, who is a well-known award-winning author in China, supposedly... (more) |
|
|
Deep Lay the Dead (1942) |
|
| Frederick C. Davis |
|
This is a decent but familiar and unremarkable murder mystery, the kind in which an odd assortment of people are trapped together in a house, not knowing which of them is the killer. In this case, they... (more) |
|
|
The Deluge (2023) |
|
| Stephen Markley |
|
One character in this tome-sized political eco-thriller is Ashir al-Hasan. Ash, as he is called by friends, is a a government data analyst. Although he also appears to be "on the spectrum",
he is not... (more) |
|
|
Digital Fortress (1996) |
|
| Dan Brown |
|
In a final act of defiance, a young Japanese genius threatens to make
public his "unbreakable code" if the NSA does not confess that it has been
reading even encrypted e-mails. The heroine of the story... (more) |
|
|
Double Digit (2014) |
|
| Annabel Monaghan |
|
This cleverly titled sequel to A Girl Named Digit follows the continuing adventures of a young "math whiz" whose talents make her both a weapon against and a target of terrorists. (more) |
|
|
Dr. No: A Novel (2022) |
|
| Percival Everett |
|
Wala Kitu is a professor of mathematics at Brown University who specializes in nothing. (It is not that he doesn't have a specialty. He is an expert in the very concept of nothingness.) His best friends... (more) |
|
|
Echoes from the Past (2006) |
|
| Edward Michel-Bird |
|
A young mathematics professor becomes involved in a mystery and a love affair when the identity of his true biological father is called into question. No mathematical ideas or results are discussed in... (more) |
|
|
The Eight (1989) |
|
| Katherine Neville |
|
This book really is AMAZING. I have read it numerous times and it always gets better. Math plays an important part in this story and the connections made in the plot are fascinating. This book is an... (more) |
|
|
The Einstein Enigma (2010) |
|
| José Rodrigues Dos Santos |
|
An adventure novel whose MacGuffin is a proof of the existence of God, formulated and hidden by Albert Einstein. There is more talk than action, which may disappoint some readers.
For those interested... (more) |
|
|
Electric (2004) |
|
| Chad Taylor |
|
Three of the characters in this novel are mathematicians. Sam is a former statistician who now works at a successful Auckland data retrieval company. Because he is attracted to the hydrodynamic equations... (more) |
|
|
En busca de Klingsor (In Search of Klingsor) (1999) |
|
| Jorge Volpi |
|
The story is highly mathematical, involving a German Character called Gustav
Links, though the main character is a young American physicist called Francis
Bacon (sounds good). The idea is that this... (more) |
|
|
Enigma (1995) |
|
| Robert Harris / Tom Stoppard |
|
In this this espionage story set in England's Bletchley Park at the height of the Second World War, Tom Jericho is a clever mathematician at the famous code breaking facility who -- either despite or because... (more) |
|
|
Equations of Life (2011) |
|
| Simon Morden |
|
To escape from his life in organized crime, the protagonist creates a fake identity as a physics student named Samuil Petrovich. Though he has made an incredible discovery in theoretical physics, Petrovich... (more) |
|
|
Evil Genius (2005) |
|
| Catherine Jinks |
|
I am pleased to report that the titular "evil genius" in this children's novel is not the stereotypical cold mathematician in so many other works of mathematical fiction. In fact, the title character... (more) |
|
|
The Expert (1999) |
|
| Lee Gruenfeld |
|
A techno-legal thriller centered on a trial over cryptographic
exportation. The chip in question uses properties of large Mersenne
primes to provide an unbreakable code. This explanation seems to... (more) |
|
|
The Facts of Death (1998) |
|
| Raymond Benson |
|
Would you believe...James Bond battling a mathematical cult bent on world destruction? (It could happen.) In this latter day Bond novel, the villian is a dynamic leader of a cult who bases his teachings... (more) |
|
|
False Witness (2007) |
|
| Randy D. Singer |
|
An espionage novel (with an embedded Christian religious message) about a mathematician's decryption algorithm with the potential to disrupt internet security.
(more) |
|
|
The Fear Index (2011) |
|
| Robert Harris |
|
Dr. Alex Hoffmann is an anti-social billionaire whose investment firm uses what he calls "Autonomous Machine Reasoning" (AMR) to make spectacular profits based on the Volatility Index (VIX), from which... (more) |
|
|
Fermat's Room (La Habitacion de Fermat) (2007) |
|
| Luis Piedrahita / Rodrigo Sopeña |
|
In this Spanish thriller, four mathematicians are invited to a booby trapped room where they must solve mathematical puzzles to prevent the walls from closing in and crushing them. This leaves them little... (more) |
|
|
Flame War: A Cyberthriller (1997) |
|
| Joshua Quittner / Michelle Slatalla |
|
A brilliant math professor invents a code that even the government will not be able to break. When he dies in an explosion, his daughter and the law student who (unknowingly) delivered the bomb that killed him work together to bring the killers to justice. (more) |
|
|
The Fringe (Episode: The Equation) (2008) |
|
| J.R. Orci (Screenplay) / David H. Goodman (Screenplay) |
|
The ``Fringe Team'' (an FBI agent, a mad scientist and his son) investigate a series of kidnappings in which the victim is hypnotized with red and green lights. In each case, the victim was about to... (more) |
|
|
Gauntlet (2009) |
|
| Richard Aaron |
|
Autistic mathematician, Hamilton Turbee, helps stop a terrorist plot.
The book has received praise for its portrayal of an autism and as a thriller. Of course, I like to see mathematicians portrayed... (more) |
|
|
Ghost Dancer [a.k.a. Dance of Death] (2006) |
|
| John Case |
|
The blurb on the cover describes anti-hero Jack Wilson as a "brilliant mathematician" and also a "diabolical madman" in this thriller based on the popular conspiracy theory claiming that Nikola Tesla is... (more) |
|
|
A Girl Named Digit (2012) |
|
| Annabel Monaghan |
|
A girl nicknamed "Digit" by her classmates because of her mathematical abilities and interests discovers a terrorist plot and begins working with the FBI to catch a double agent in this adventure aimed... (more) |
|
|
The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009) |
|
| Stieg Larsson |
|
In this sequel to the stunningly popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the self-taught, nearly autistic, young genius, Lisbeth Salander, once again becomes involved in a thrilling mystery allied with... (more) |
|
|
The Givenchy Code (2005) |
|
| Julie Kenner |
|
You've got to love the tag lines for this book: "A heel-breaking adventure in code-breaking that will bring out the math geek and the fashionista in you". "Cryptography is the new black".
A woman with... (more) |
|
|
The God Wave (2016) |
|
| Patrick Hemstreet |
|
A neuroscientist and mathematician team up to boost the intellectual power of some experimental subjects by altering their brain waves in this techno-thriller. Math is frequently mentioned throughout... (more) |
|
|
Gospel Truths (2007) |
|
| J.G. Sandom |
|
Another novel in the same genre as The Da Vinci Code — an Earth-shaking secret which can destroy the Roman Catholic Church (as a character says, “Can you imagine the headline? ‘Christ... (more) |
|
|
Ground Zero Man (The Peace Machine) (1971) |
|
| Bob Shaw |
|
A self-described `unimportant mathematician' who works on guidance systems for a British weapons manufacturer discovers, just by playing around with the formulas, a way to cause the explosion of every... (more) |
|
|
Gödel Numbers (1969) |
|
| J.W. Swanson |
|
The story revolves around an ancient stone artifact found near Cairo which has engraved markings of slanted lines. In an incredible non-sequitor, one of the characters in the story guesses that the numbers... (more) |
|
|
Hapgood (1988) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
|
A brief discussion of Euler's solution to the Königsburg Bridge Problem appears in Stoppard's play about espionage and quantum physics.
When a British physicist double-agent is accused of giving... (more) |
|
|
Hickory Dickory Shock! The Tale of Techies (2010) |
|
| Sundip Gorai |
|
This novel, which the author tells me is a best-seller in India, is a mystery thriller whose protagonist is a young man named "210". In the first chapter, which is available for free at the book's official... (more) |
|
|
Imaginary Numbers (2020) |
|
| Seanan McGuire |
|
Sarah Zellaby, a running character in McGuire's InCryptid books, is featured prominently in this entry from the series. Sarah's species evolved from insects in another dimension but look essentially like... (more) |
|
|
The Imitation Game (2014) |
|
| Morten Tyldum (director) / Graham Moore (screenplay) |
|
This film about Alan Turing and his role in breaking the Nazi enigma code has been a critical and financial success. It has won numerous awards and brought huge crowds of people to see a movie about a... (more) |
|
|
Improbable (2005) |
|
| Adam Fawer |
|
A probability expert suffering from epilepsy (with hints of schizophrenia) is in over his head with gambling debts to the Russian mob and a beautiful, renegade CIA agent before discovering that he has the ability to predict the future. A running subplot is the mathematical aspects of determinism (i.e. (more) |
|
|
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) |
|
| James Mangold / Jez Butterworth/John-Henry Butterworth/David Koepp |
|
I finally saw this final installment of the Indiana Jones movies and was surprised that there was a mathematical aspect to it. In hindsight, I realize that the reason I did not hear about it is that it... (more) |
|
|
Invisible (2014) |
|
| James Patterson / David Ellis |
|
The (somewhat unlikeable) protagonist of this thriller is an FBI agent who loved numbers as a little girl and still prefers statistical analysis of data to time spent with other people. Combining this anti-social behavior with an obsessive desire to find a pattern among a huge number of unsolved murders leads her to begin her own investigation. (more) |
|
|
Kim Possible (Episode: Mathter and Fervent) (2007) |
|
| Jim Peronto (script) |
|
This episode of the Disney animated TV series "Kim Possible" is a comic book parody featuring a mathematical villain.
As an English assignment, Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable have to write a paper... (more) |
|
|
The Kingdom of Ohio (2009) |
|
| Matthew Flaming |
|
Cheri-Anne Toledo, the daughter of the King of Ohio, uses her mathematical skills (and the assistance of Nikola Tesla) to build a device that is supposed to be able transport people instantaneously from... (more) |
|
|
The Last Enemy (2008) |
|
| Peter Berry (Screenplay) / Iain B. MacDonald (Director) |
|
In this BBC TV series, mathematician Stephen Ezard (Benedict Cumberbatch) returns home from China for his brother's funeral but finds himself caught up in two simultaneous stories of high level espionage.... (more) |
|
|
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy (2018) |
|
| Nova Jacobs |
|
After mathematician Isaac Severy's suspicious death, his grand-daughter follows the clues he left her to find and protect his final discovery.
In this murder mystery/family drama, Hazel Severy leaves... (more) |
|
|
The Last Theorem (2008) |
|
| Arthur C. Clarke / Frederik Pohl |
|
Ranjit Subramanian, the protagonist in this science fiction novel, is a young Sri Lankan man who (re)discovers a short and elementary proof of Fermat's Last Theorem while enduring torture during an unjust... (more) |
|
|
The Lost Books of the Odyssey (2008) |
|
| Zachary Mason |
|
The introduction to this novel is a work of pseudo-scholarship, explaining how the chapters to follow were decoded by an NSA cryptographer with the help of the author. The intro contains references to... (more) |
|
|
Lost Empire (A Sam and Remi Fargo Adventure) (2011) |
|
| Clive Cussler / Grant Blackwood |
|
When archaeological adventuring couple Remi and Sam Fargo come across an old ship's bell off the coast of Zanzibar, they discover that someone else doesn't want them to find it. Eventually, their discovery... (more) |
|
|
The Lure (2007) |
|
| Bill Napier |
|
Irish mathematician Tom Petrie is called in as an expert to analyze a mysterious stream of particles that appears to be a message from aliens. The math never gets very deep. Petrie is supposed to be... (more) |
|
|
Magic Squares (1977) |
|
| Paul Calter |
|
A very unconventionally written mystery story full of well placed and well-integrated problems in mathematics, which makes this a great book to be included in a course on ‘mathematics in literature'.... (more) |
|
|
Math Patrol (1977) |
|
| TV Ontario |
|
"Math Patrol was a 15-minute long educational TV series produced in the late 1970s by TV Ontario about the adventures of a secret agent named "Sydney" who dressed up as a kangaroo with a blue trenchcoat.... (more) |
|
|
The Mathematician (1967) |
|
| Will Manson |
|
Despite the title, there is almost no math in this pulpy spy story. Its Cold War nationalism and sexism date it somewhat, but it is fine as light entertainment, with danger, romance, and a "twist ending".
The... (more) |
|
|
Mercury Rising (1998) |
|
| Harold Becker (director) |
|
Bruce Willis is an FBI agent trying to protect an autistic child whose mathematical abilities allow him to break the government's top secret codes.
Now, it is true that some of the most frequently used... (more) |
|
|
Middlegame (2019) |
|
| Seanan McGuire |
|
When they were young, Roger (who lives in Cambridge MA and loves words) and Dodger (who lives in Palo Alto and loves math) had a psychic link that allowed them to see through each other's eyes, and to... (more) |
|
|
Mr. Churchill's Secretary (2012) |
|
| Susan Elia MacNeal |
|
After graduating with a degree in mathematics from Wellesley, Maggie Hope plans to go on to graduate studies at MIT, but her plans change unexpectedly when a letter from England gets her instead looking... (more) |
|
|
The Mystic Cipher (2009) |
|
| Dennis Mangrum |
|
When an ex-Army Ranger finds a mysterious coded document on his farm purporting to be the key to the location of a hidden treasure, he enlists the aid of his daughter, a math student. There is stereotypical... (more) |
|
|
No Regrets (2007) |
|
| Shannon Butcher |
|
This is an espionage thriller in which a cryptographer reluctantly helps the military break a mathematical code. It gets high ratings from those who enjoy this sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff. Moreover,... (more) |
|
|
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976) |
|
| Jeffrey Archer |
|
A mathematics professor who lectures at Oxford on group theory is among four clever people who plot to get revenge on the con artist who duped them in this, the first novel by politician and now best-selling... (more) |
|
|
Null Set (2019) |
|
| S.L. Huang |
|
Cas Russell, the math-genius mercenary, returns in the sequel to Zero Sum Game. As before, she can perform calculations quickly and accurately enough to determine exactly how she needs to swing, kick,... (more) |
|
|
The Number of Love (The Codebreakers) (2019) |
|
| Roseanna M. White |
|
This novel may fall into an unlikely combination of categories (it is a wartime religious historical romance spy story that is also mathematical), but its main character is a familiar stereotype: Margot... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Oh, Brother (2007) |
|
| Stanley Hart |
|
A serious mystery/adventure novella from an author better known as a script writer for the old Carol Burnett show. A professor solicits the help of his brother, a retired police detective, in order to... (more) |
|
|
Ossian's Ride (1959) |
|
| Fred Hoyle |
|
In the year 1970 (the future when this science fiction novel was written), the country of Ireland has tremendous financial success and power resulting from a string of amazing technological innovations.... (more) |
|
|
Petersburg (1913) |
|
| Andrei Bely |
|
In this modernist Russian novel, the revolutionary Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov is charged with the task of killing a Tsarist official ... his own father. In addition to mathematical terminology that... (more) |
|
|
The Phantom Scientist [Le Chercher Phantôme] (2013) |
|
| Robin Cousin |
|
This graphic novel takes place at at "The Institute for the Study of Complex and Dynamic Systems", which facilitates interactions between researchers in different disciplines. Although none of the researchers... (more) |
|
|
PopCo (2004) |
|
| Scarlett Thomas |
|
Alice was raised by her grandparents, a mathematician and a cryptographer, and now uses what she learned from them to make mathematical puzzles for children. Her employer, the giant toy company "PopCo",... (more) |
|
|
Pythagoras' Revenge: A Mathematical Mystery (2009) |
|
| Arturo Sangalli |
|
Freelance science journalist Sangalli has written a book which presents some historical information about Pythagoras and his beliefs in the form of a novel of the detail driven conspiracy theory adventure... (more) |
|
|
Qui perd gagne! (2003) |
|
| Laurent Bénégui (Director) |
|
In this French film, a math teacher claims to have a system for winning the lottery.
I tracked this down after seeing the page on your site a couple of days ago. It is a very enjoyable movie, but... (more) |
|
|
The Rabbit Factor [Jäniskerroin] (2020) |
|
| Antti Tuomainen |
|
After his anti-social tendencies get him fired from his job as an actuary, the mathematically obsessed Henri inherits his deceased brother's adventure park, along with his tremendous debt to a dangerous... (more) |
|
|
The Romanian Gambit: A Statistical Spy Novel (2020) |
|
| Elliott Ostler |
|
This espionage novel attempts to teach the reader about statistical analysis.
Alex:
The Romanian Gambit, A Statistical Spy Novel (2020) by Elliott Ostler, is now available on Amazon, and IMHO belongs... (more) |
|
|
The Rule of Four (2004) |
|
| Ian Caldwell / Dustin Thomason |
|
There is an enigmatic book from the late 15th century called Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, written by an Italian monk, Francesco Colonna (available at gutenberg.org for download). The book chronicles the... (more) |
|
|
The Sabre Squadron (1966) |
|
| Simon Raven |
|
Daniel Mond, a British PhD candidate in mathematics, finds himself in mortal danger after traveling to Göttingen in the 1950s to analyze papers by the deceased German mathematician Dortmund.
I had... (more) |
|
|
Sebastian (1968) |
|
| David Greene (director) |
|
A film about a British mathematician trying to break the German codes during World War II. (So, add this to the growing list of works of mathematical fiction inspired by Alan Turing!) I must admit that I have not yet seen the film, but you've got to love its tagline:
We can't tell you what he does (it's an international secret) but he does it with 100 girls... and does it the best!
(more) |
|
|
Sekret Enigmy (1979) |
|
| Roman Wionczek
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Although Alan Turing tends to get much of the credit for breaking the Nazi "Enigma" codes during World War II, three Polish mathematicians did preliminary work that (depending on who you ask) either equally brilliant and important or even more so. This film tells their story, featuring some real acts of heroism.
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Seven Wonders (2014) |
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| Ben Mezrich |
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The hero of this conspiracy theory adventure has -- or had -- a twin brother who was an anti-social, OCD math genius precisely following the standard literary stereotype. However, he was murdered after... (more) |
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The Shadow of the God (1900) |
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| Charles Newman Hall |
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A cute, poetically-written story set in the Yucatan, where Ethel, her cousin, Tom, and Tom’s college friend, Whitman, went looking at the ruins of an ancient Aztec “Temple of Huitzilopochtli”.
Whitman... (more) |
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Sharper than a Sword (1983) |
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| Alexander Petrovich Kazantsev |
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The famous Soviet science fiction author Kazantsev wrote this fantasy adventure featuring Pierre de Fermat. as the primary protagonist.
As far as I know, the book is out of print and available only... (more) |
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She is Not Invisible (2013) |
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| Marcus Sedgwick |
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In this young adult thriller, a blind teenager and her younger brother search for their missing father, a successful author obsessed with coincidence and the number 354. Although the approach is more supernatural and numerological than mathematical, there is also some flavor of probability and discussion of such things as Benford's Law.
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She Spies (Episode: Message from Kassar) (2003) |
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| Vince Manze (script) / Joe Livecchi (script) / Steven Long Mitchell (script) |
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Although I lived in the US and had a TV in 2003, I somehow completely missed “She Spies”. I had no idea such a show existed. And so, while watching this episode to see whether it really is “mathematical... (more) |
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) |
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| Guy Ritchie (director) |
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There is not much actual mathematics in this sequel which, like its predecessor, features a version of Sherlock Holmes portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. as more of an action hero than the one in Sir Arthur... (more) |
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Simple Genius (2007) |
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| David Baldacci |
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A small child with an inexplicable ability to factor large numbers threatens the security of the Western world in this political thriller from popular author Baldacci. Although it is nice to see mathematics... (more) |
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Sneakers (1992) |
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| Phil Alden Robinson (director) |
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Complex espionage story, more about computers than mathematics.
However, mathematics is clearly an underlying theme and in one scene
the mysterious mathematician Gunter Janek lectures on mathematical
aspects... (more) |
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Songs My Mother Never Taught Me (2007) |
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| Selçuk Altun |
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After his mother's death, a young Turkish man seeks his father's killer. His father was a very charismatic, conceited and famous mathematician, but aside from that there is little math in the book. The... (more) |
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The Spoilers (1968) |
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| Desmond Bagley |
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June, the daughter of Sir Robert Hellier, a wealthy movie moghul, dies of an overdose of heroin dissolved in a solution of methylamphetamine. So Sir Hellier decides to finance a no-cost-spared war against... (more) |
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Stamping Butterflies (2004) |
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| Jon Courtenay Grimwood |
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A "going back to change the timelines" SF story involving a reclusive rock star, a suspected terrorist being subjected to harsh tactics by US intelligence, and the young Chinese emperor who rules thousands... (more) |
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The Steradian Trail (2013) |
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| M.N. Krish |
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This mathematical thriller takes place in India where American computer science professor Joshua Ezekiel is attempting to figure out the twisted criminal plot that his recently murdered student had become... (more) |
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Sweet Tooth (2012) |
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| Ian McEwan |
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A female mathematics student at the University of Cambridge gets recruited for intelligence work by the MI5. She tries to explain the Monty Hall Problem to her boyfriend (a budding author), but he fails... (more) |
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Teen Patti (2010) |
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| Leena Yadav (Director) |
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This Bollywood film features Ben Kingsley as a math professor whose theory of probability allows him (and a team of student helpers) to win huge sums of money gambling. The plot sounds suspiciously similar... (more) |
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Ten (1986) |
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| Isaac Asimov |
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We might argue that the particular words and symbols we use to express
mathematical concepts are not as important as the concepts themselves...and
mathematically that may well be the case. However,... (more) |
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Tetraktys (2009) |
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| Ari Juels |
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A thriller in which a classicist with expertise in cryptography helps to track down a Pythagorean cult that has apparently discovered the ability to factor large integers quickly and therefore can break... (more) |
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The Siege Of The "Lancashire Queen" (1906) |
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| Jack London |
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Describes how the capture of illegal shrimp-poachers becomes a problem of triangular geometry and relative speeds of chase. In particular, the pirates, trapped on a ship, the chasing posse and the point... (more) |
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The Thousand (2010) |
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| Kevin Guilfoile |
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Two competing Pythagorean cults (one "fundamentalist" and the other believing in "further revelations") are behind worldwide disasters such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and hurricane Katrina in this conspiracy... (more) |
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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (2015) |
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| Sydney Padua |
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This graphic novel starts out as a basically realistic fictionalized biography of the 19th century mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, even if it is a biography with a snarky sense of humor.... (more) |
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Torn Curtain (1966) |
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| Alfred Hitchcock (Director) |
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Professor Armstrong (Paul Newman) pretends to defect to the other side
of the iron curtain to learn of the secret "star wars"-like defense
plan discovered by the brilliant (by his own account) Dr. Lindt.
Fiancee... (more) |
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Touch (2012) |
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| Tim Kring |
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This TV show combines disparate familiar elements. Like "24", it has Kiefer Sutherland running around trying to save people. Like "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" it has the autistic child of a single... (more) |
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Travelling Salesman (2012) |
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| Andy Lanzone (writer) / Timothy Lanzone (director and writer) |
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This film is a low-budget intellectual thriller about a Fields Medalist who, while working for the NSA, helps to prove that P=NP and takes part in the deliberations to decide what to do with it. "Travelling... (more) |
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The Turing Enigma (2011) |
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| Peter Wild (Screenwriter and Director) |
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Maths professor Jonah Block finds himself in possession of a 50 year old postcard from Alan Turing over which people have been killed. He quickly realizes it is the (literal) key to decoding a series... (more) |
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Turing's Delirium (2007) |
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| Edmundo Paz Soldan |
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This is a hacker-counter-hacker story set in Bolivia, where the newly resurrected president hires an NSA official to set up the country's counter-espionage / cyber-security unit ("Black Chamber"). The... (more) |
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The Visiting Professor (1994) |
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| Robert Littell |
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Lemuel Falk, a ``randomnist'' from the Steklov Institute in Russia
gets a visiting position at a chaos research institute in Upstate New
York in this academic farce. He meets a drunkard who studies... (more) |
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Void Star (2017) |
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| Zachary Mason |
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This is a beautifully written and deep work of near-future science fiction about the development of an amazingly powerful sort of artificial intelligence. Two of the characters are mathematical both in name and perspective: Thales is a mathematically inclined Brazilian billionaire who encounters a mysterious AI which calls itself "the mathematician". (more) |
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White Rabbit, Red Wolf [This Story is a Lie] (2018) |
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| Tom Pollock |
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Seventeen-year-old Peter Blankman is afraid of most things, but he loves his mother (a famous research psychologist), his twin sister (a tough girl who looks out for him), and math. So, he is in trouble... (more) |
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The Year of the Tiger (1996) |
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| Jack Higgins |
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Cold war spy thriller in which our hero must help an aged Soviet
mathematician escape to our side of the Iron Curtain. (I haven't read the
book, just some reviews, so if there is more to say about it... (more) |
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Zero Sum Game (2018) |
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| S.L. Huang |
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Cas Russell is violent and amoral. She is also really good at math. Her understanding of physics and quick work with vectors allows her to do things like ricochet a tossed cell phone just right to knock... (more) |
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