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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) |
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The Adventures of a Mathematician (2020) |
 | Thor Klein |
|
This film about mathematician Stanislaw Ulam is based on his autobiography with the same title but focuses only on the period of time when, as a recent immigrant from Poland, he was working on the Manhattan... (more) |
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The Adventures of Topology Man (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
Parody is easy....topology is hard!
In this short story, I made use of (and made fun of) the classic superhero comic book genre to illustrate some ideas from topology. So, we end up seeing a battle... (more) |
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After Math (1997) |
|
| Miriam Webster |
|
The ghost of math professor Ray Bellwether tries to solve the mystery of
his own murder in this `first novel' by Amy Babich (Webster is just a
pseudonym). Babich has a Ph.D. in mathematics (and a Master's... (more) |
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Arcadia (1993) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
|
Stoppard's critically successful play includes long discussions of topics of
mathematical interest including: Fermat's Last Theorem and Newtonian
determinism, iterated algorithms, the second law of thermodynamics,
Fourier's... (more) |
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The Atrocity Archives (2004) |
|
| Charles Stross |
|
"The Laundry" is a British spy organization which is responsible for suppressing certain dangerous math research. The occult implications of mathematics became clear with Alan Turing's paper "Phase Conjugate... (more) |
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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) |
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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) |
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Blowups Happen (1940) |
|
| Robert A. Heinlein |
|
A mathematician discovers that his formulas predict that an important
new power station poses an extremely grave risk to humanity, and he
must convince others of the danger.
reprinted in THE PAST... (more) |
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Bonita Avenue (2010) |
|
| Peter Buwalda |
|
This widely acclaimed and popular Dutch novel concerns a mathematician who is a sort of intellectual public figure that the United States does not seem to have. After winning the Fields Medal for his... (more) |
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Calculated Magic (1995) |
|
| Robert Weinberg |
|
In this sequel to A Logical Magician, the mathematically trained wizard's assistant returns to fight evil monsters in Vegas and save his fiance (Merlin's daughter) from Hell.
I do like the idea that... (more) |
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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) |
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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) |
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Crash Course in Romance (2023) |
|
| Je Won Yu (director) / Hee-Seung Yang (writer) |
|
A grocery store owner and a "celebrity" math teacher fall in love in this South Korean TV series. Each episode’s title is mathematical, and we get to see Choi Chi-yeol being treated like a rock star... (more) |
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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) |
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The Cypher Bureau (2018) |
|
| Eilidh McGinness |
|
This work of historical fiction tells the story of Marian Rejewski, a Polish mathematician who used algebraic methods to break the Nazi Enigma code before the beginning of World War II. Most of the book... (more) |
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Dark as Day (2002) |
|
| Charles Sheffield |
|
Alex Ligon, though unbelievably rich, chooses to work voluntarily at a government
agency where his predictive models for the future of the human race (based,
he claims, on the principles of statistical... (more) |
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Dark Integers (2007) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
The ``cold war'' between this universe with our mathematical laws and a bordering universe with different ones (which began in "Luminous") heats up when the numerical experiments of a mathematical physicist... (more) |
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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) |
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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) |
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The Doors of Eden (2020) |
|
| Adrian Tchaikovsky |
|
A handful of inhabitants of Earths with different evolutionary histories find themselves either working together to save their worlds as the multi-verse collapses. The characters include a cryptid-hunting... (more) |
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Evariste and Heloise (2008) |
|
| Marco Abate |
|
This contribution to the collection The Shape of Content is difficult to classify. Combining fiction and fact, essay and comic book, fantasy and philosophy, it essentially takes the form of a proposal... (more) |
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Evariste Galois (1965) |
|
| Alexadre Astruc (writer and director) |
|
Short film about the romantic and tragic death of Galois, the young mathematician whose research laid the foundation for Group Theory. I haven't actually seen the film, but the following quote (stolen... (more) |
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The Fifth-Dimension Catapult (1931) |
|
| Murray Leinster |
|
This short novel, originally published in the January 1931 ASTOUNDING,
and republished by Damon Knight in SCIENCE FICTION OF THE 30'S (1975),
involves a mathematical physicist whose theories get applied... (more) |
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The God Equation (2007) |
|
| Michael A.R. Co |
|
The angel Azrael is ordered to kill a Philippine mathematician who is using the Internet to create a mathematical proof of the existence of God.
In this story, Azrael is presented as a hitman who kills... (more) |
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The God Patent (2009) |
|
| Ransom Stephens |
|
After his life falls apart, an engineer tries to revive a collaboration with the fundamentalist Christian with whom he once wrote two patents based on the Bible. While he viewed these patents for what... (more) |
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Hidden Figures (2016) |
|
| Allison Schroeder (writer) / Theodore Melfi (director and writer) |
|
Hidden Figures is a "Hollywood-ized" version of the true story of three women who worked in the "colored computers" unit at NASA's Langley Research Center. In particular, it follows Katherine (Goble)... (more) |
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I of Newton (1970) |
|
| Joe Haldeman |
|
In this short story a mathematics professor accidentally summons a demon
by cursing while working on a problem involving integration. The devil
brags
that he is able to disprove Fermat's last theorem,... (more) |
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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) |
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The Integral: A Horror Story (2009) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
This story, which he claims is an attempt to emulate Stephen King, is different from many of Adams' others. This may explain why it was published for the first time in his 2009 collections Riot at the... (more) |
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Jurassic Park (1990) |
|
| Michael Crichton |
|
Although there is really not much mathematics in this SF thriller at all, the
mathematician (played in the
film by
Jeff Goldbloom) has an important role as the only
person smart enough to recognize... (more) |
|
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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) |
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Lambada (1990) |
|
| Joel Silbert (Director and Writer) / Sheldon Renan (Screenplay) |
|
A blend of "Stand and Deliver" with "Dirty Dancing" with a high school math teacher who spends his evenings doing lambada dance moves in night clubs. He appears to be a very dedicated teacher, and in... (more) |
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The Legend of Howard Thrush (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
I always have enjoyed the American folk tale, a medium in which one pretends to be speaking earnestly and in all sincerity about a history so ridiculous that it it simply cannot be taken seriously. There... (more) |
|
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A Logical Magician (1994) |
|
| Robert Weinberg |
|
A very creative romp through the lore of creatures of mythology and their return in modern times. A computer programmer creates a program to decode ancient texts and find the incantations to invoke powerful... (more) |
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Luminous (1995) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
A truly wonderful story in which two math grad students discover that the things we consider to be "truths" in number theory are actually part of a dynamical system, subject to change over time and in... (more) |
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|
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MathNet (1987) |
|
| Childrens Television Workshop |
|
A children's TV show in which mysteries are solved using
mathematics. The suspects and victims always ask the investigators
"Are you the police?" To which they reply "No, we're
mathematicians!"... (more) |
|
|
The Measure of Eternity (2006) |
|
| Sean McMullen |
|
The beautiful servant of an even more beautiful courtesan leaves the palace in an ancient city and finds a beggar proudly shouting "I have nothing" in many different languages. Yet, this beggar seems... (more) |
|
|
Moebius (1996) |
|
| Gustavo Daniel Mosquera R. |
|
In this Argentinian film, a mathematician discovers a bizarre topological
explanation for the disappearance of a train in the labrynthian Buenos
Aires subway system. Although based on the short story... (more) |
|
|
Monster (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
A story about group theory, plagiarism, the untapped potential of a collaboration between mathematics and marketing, the bleak financial future of academia, and the Monster.
This story talks about... (more) |
|
|
The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb (1935) |
|
| Talbot Mundy |
|
A rapid-read, reasonably entertaining novel about the real location of the Pharaoh Khufu's (Cheops) tomb and the fabulous treasury buried therein. An old, Chinese mathematician spends decades decoding... (more) |
|
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NUMB3RS (2005) |
|
| Nick Falacci / Cheryl Heuton |
|
This TV crime drama (premiered January 2005) follows the adventures of a pair of brothers, one a mathematics professor and the other an FBI agent, as they combine forces to solve mysteries.
Cool effects... (more) |
|
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Numbercruncher (2013) |
|
| Si Spurrier (writer) / PJ Holden (artist) |
|
A recently deceased mathematician "cracks the recirculation algorithm" and thus is able to control his own reincarnation in the hope of being able to spend more time with the woman he loves. It ends up... (more) |
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|
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) |
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Paradox (2000) |
|
| John Meaney |
|
Young Tom Corcorigan seems to represent the lowest "caste" in the extremely hierarchical human society of the year 3404. However, his mathematical abilities (he is able to figure out a way around Gödel's... (more) |
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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) |
|
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Prime Suspects: The Anatomy of Integers and Permutations (2019) |
|
| Andrew Granville / Jennifer Granville / Robert J. Lewis (Illustrator) |
|
In this graphic novel, the surprising coincidences between complete factorizations of integers, permutations, and polynomials is presented as if it were the discovery of a forensic team investigating seemingly... (more) |
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Psychohistorical Crisis (2001) |
|
| Donald Kingsbury |
|
In the far future, a group of "psychohistorians" controls the fate of humanity using the mathematical theory of "the founder" in this unauthorized "sequel" to Asimov's Foundation series. Kingsbury's lengthy... (more) |
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Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle Volume 1 (2003) |
|
| Neal Stephenson |
|
This long novel from the author of Cryptonomicon does for 17th Century mathematics what that earlier novel did for the 20th century. Namely, it deifies some great historical mathematicians (this time... (more) |
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Sekret Enigmy (1979) |
|
| Roman Wionczek
|
|
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.
(more) |
|
|
The Shadow Guests (1980) |
|
| Joan Aiken |
|
After his mother's death, a boy goes to live with his aunt, a
mathematician, in her haunted English house where he meets the ghosts of his ancestors and learns about his family's curse. The mathematician... (more) |
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|
Sneakers (1992) |
|
| Phil Alden Robinson (director) |
|
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) |
|
|
Super 30 (2019) |
|
| Vikas Bahl (director) / Sanjeev Dutta (writer) |
|
A superb Bollywood movie based on a real life hero, Anand Kumar, who seems so fictional and yet, so very real in the context of a country like India. The very best in human values which appeal to a higher... (more) |
|
|
Torn Curtain (1966) |
|
| Alfred Hitchcock (Director) |
|
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) |
|
|
The Visiting Professor (1994) |
|
| Robert Littell |
|
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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White Rabbit, Red Wolf [This Story is a Lie] (2018) |
|
| Tom Pollock |
|
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 World We Make (2022) |
|
| N. K. Jemisin |
|
Readers of the first novel in the series, The City We Became, have already met Padmini Prakash. She loves pure math and hates New York City, but due to familial pressures is preparing to be a Wall Street... (more) |
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