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Adventure of the Final Problem (1893) |
 | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
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This first Sherlock Holmes story about Professor Moriarty (later to be
viewed as Holmes' arch enemy) introduces him as a professor of
mathematics who won fame as a young man for his extension of the
binomial... (more) |
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The Adventure of the Russian Grave (1995) |
 | William Barton / Michael Capobianco |
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17 years after the death of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes comes across some loose ends
involving Moriarty. Following these clues down into eastern Siberia with
Watson, a set of mathematical calculations... (more) |
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The Adventures of Topology Man (2005) |
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| Alex Kasman |
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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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The Bird with the Broken Wing (1930) |
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| Agatha Christie |
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The Harley Quin stories (this collection, plus two later stories) are amongst the most peculiar mysteries ever written. (They certainly are Dame Agatha's most peculiar. They were also her personal... (more) |
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The Bishop Murder Case (1929) |
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| S.S. van Dine (pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright) |
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Our hero, Vance, says at the end of this mystery novel: "At the outset I was able to postulate a mathematician as the criminal agent. The difficulty of naming the murderer lay in the fact that nearly... (more) |
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Brain Dead (1990) |
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| Charles Beaumont (writer) /
Adam Simon (director) |
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A nightmarish, reality bending horror movie about a brain surgeon whose services are obtained to retrieve corporate secrets from the mind of a mathematician who has become a homicidal maniac.
(more) |
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Dear Abbey (2003) |
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| Terry Bisson |
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This novel, which has not received many good reviews and appears only to have been published in Britain, involves a math professor who is a terrorist for environmentalist causes. (That the author chose... (more) |
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Doctor Who: The Algebra of Ice (2004) |
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| Lloyd Rose (pseudonym of Sarah Tonyn) |
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Lloyd Rose (pen name for Sarah Tonyn) has a “Doctor Who” book called “The Algebra of Ice”. It describes the attempted invasion of our universe by mathematical beings from another dimension. These... (more) |
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The Facts of Death (1998) |
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| Raymond Benson |
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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) |
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Ghost Dancer (2006) |
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| John Case |
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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) |
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Hidden in Glass (1931) |
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| Paul Ernst |
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A murder mystery involving a mathematical physicist. One Professor Brainard, who is claimed to have mastered "the secret of the fourth dimension" (haven't they all in the pulps?), has a serious professional... (more) |
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Immortal Bird (1961) |
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| H. Russell Wakefield |
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Professor Brandley, a "young" man of 53, wants nothing more than to attain the position of Regius Professor of Pure Mathematics at the Metropolitan University in London so that he could train "disciples... (more) |
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Inflexible Logic (1940) |
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| Russell Maloney |
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There is a famous example of probability which (in one of its many
forms) states that six chimpanzees randomly typing at six typewriters
would eventually reproduce all of the books in the British museum.... (more) |
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The Integral: A Horror Story (2009) |
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| Colin Adams |
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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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Killing Time (2000) |
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| Frank Tallis |
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In this noir thriller, a British math grad student discovers antique lab equipment which allows him to see into the past and winds up murdering his girlfriend. Sex (explicitly described) and interpersonal... (more) |
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Mailman (2000) |
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| J. Robert Lennon |
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The title character, called Mailman, is a mentally ill mailman
with criminal and deviant behavior with respect to the mail that
he handles. It turns out that Mailman had once been a mathematics
graduate... (more) |
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Moriarty by Modem (1995) |
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| Jack Nimersheim |
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A cyberversion of Sherlock Holmes is created to track down an accidently
released cyberversion of Moriarty. The big clue involves both the binomial
theorem and binomial variables.
Published in... (more) |
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Nuremberg Joys (2000) |
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| Charles Sheffield |
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A mathematician is on trial for war crimes, regarding
his role in developing an absolutely horrendous killing
weapon based on sophisticated new physics. Guilt or
... (more) |
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Nymphomation (2000) |
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| Jeff Noon |
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A math professor's theory of ``nymphomation'' (described in the book as a way for numbers to mate) is used to develop a lottery game called "Domino Bones" that entirely takes over the city of Manchester,... (more) |
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Powerball 310 (2007) |
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| K.T. Reid |
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The premise of this amusing crime caper is a gang of experts who pull of a successful theft of a $310 million Powerball lottery jackpot by generating a winning ticket just after the numbers have been... (more) |
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Professor and Colonel (1987) |
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| Ruth Berman |
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In this unusual story, we get to see another side to Sherlock Holmes' arch enemy, the brilliant but evil mathematician Professor Moriarty. Here, rather than perpetrating a crime, Moriarty is merely visiting with his brother, discussing the significance of his research into asteroid dynamics. (See also Asimov's take on this same subject.) (more) |
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Straw Dogs (1971) |
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| Sam Peckinpah (Director) |
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Dustin Hoffman stars as an astrophysicist in this violent
Peckinpah film. Before the violence starts, Hoffman's wife plays a
trick on him by changing some signs (+/-) in an equation he is working
with.... (more) |
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Strip Search (2007) |
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| William Bernhardt |
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A detective is aided by an autistic child in capturing a serial killer who leaves equations written in the blood of his victims at the scenes of his grisly crimes.
Both due to lack of time (I am on... (more) |
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Threshold (1997) |
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| Sara Douglass |
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This is another fantasy book in which mathematics is seen as a sort of magic, but in this one it is specifically a particularly evil, cold and inhuman form of magic, in contrast to other less formulaic... (more) |
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The Ultimate Crime (1976) |
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| Isaac Asimov |
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We all know that Sherlock Holmes' arch enemy was a mathematician,
right? (If not, check out Sherlock Holmes.)
In fact, his second famous paper was on the dynamics of an asteroid.
Now, you may ask,... (more) |
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The Valley of Fear (1916) |
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| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
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Having introduced Sherlock Holmes' most famous enemy, Professor
Moriarty, as a mathematician in an earlier
story, Doyle provides us with just a small glimpse of his
mathematical genius (as opposed to... (more) |
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