 |
Battle of the Frog and the Mouse (1984) |
 | John Barrow |
|
This succinct, well-writtten fable captures the polemics between Hilbert and Brouwer related to Hilbert's Formalist position and Brouwer's Constructivist position vis a vis the foundations of mathematics... (more) |
|
 |
Breaking the Code (1986) |
 | Hugh Whitemore (playwright) |
|
This biography of Alan Turing is a "character study" of this
fascinating mathematician. Although we do see some mathematics (including
an especially nice description of Gödel's Theorem and its mathematical
significance)... (more) |
|
|
Calculus of Murder (1986) |
|
| Erik Rosenthal |
|
"The hero is a part-time instructor and
researcher at Berkeley and moonlights as a PI. He solves his cases
using calculus. The narrative is excellent, humorous, and believable."
Actually, I just... (more) |
|
|
Continuums (2008) |
|
| Robert Carr |
|
The decisions we make and the difficulty in accepting the consequences is the main focus of this book about a Romanian mathematician who leaves her country and her daughter to be in a place that she could... (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) |
|
|
Division by Zero (1991) |
|
| Ted Chiang |
|
Answers the question: what would happen if we found out that
mathematics is inconsistent? This is a great piece of
mathematical fiction. (Thanks to Frank Chess who pointed it out to
me.)
Renee... (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) |
|
|
Euclid Alone (1975) |
|
| William F. Orr |
|
An administrator in the math department of a major research institute
has to decide how to handle a paper which proves the inconsistency of
Euclidean geometry. (more) |
|
|
Gödel's Doom (1985) |
|
| George Zebrowski |
|
What if Gödel was wrong? That is the question asked in this well
written but very confused short story. The characters in this story
decide to test Gödel's theorem by running a computer
program... (more) |
|
|
Gödel's Sunflowers (1997) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
|
Far in the future, a human explores a giant fractal construction which is a
physical realization of the total knowledge of the creatures which created
it long ago. In the process he learns about Gödel's... (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) |
|
|
Herbrand's Conjecture and the White Sox Scandal (1993) |
|
| Eliot Fintushel |
|
Hi, I'm Eliot Fintushel, the author of HERBRAND'S CONJECTURE AND THE WHITE
SOX SCANDAL. The idea is that the mathematical logician Jacques Herbrand
who actually did die in a mountaineering accident... (more) |
|
|
Incompleteness (2004) |
|
| Apostolos Doxiadis |
|
A play by the author of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture on the last, sad days in the life of Kurt Gödel. After a "workshop production" in Athens, Greece (June 24-28, 2003) the show's official... (more) |
|
|
Journey into a Dark Heart (1998) |
|
| Peter Hoeg |
|
This story appears in the collection Tales of the Night made up of stories by Hoeg that are all set on the evening of March 19, 1929. In this one, a depressed young Danish mathematician takes a train... (more) |
|
|
The Logic Pool (1997) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
|
The Logic Pool deals with an intelligence that is similar
to the meme-minds in Gregory Benford's Foundations Fear.
Meme-mind -- I think this means some sort of intelligence whose
existence arises... (more) |
|
|
Logicomix (2008) |
|
| Apostolos Doxiadis / Christos Papadimitriou |
|
A graphic novel on the history of mathematical logic by the authors of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture and Turing. In an interview (available online here) Papadimitriou says:
It is really... (more) |
|
|
Midtown Pythagoras (2007) |
|
| Michael Brodsky |
|
Michael Brodsky is a deconstructionist's dream writer, which for most people,
simply means utterly unreadable. His many novels, stories, and plays inhabit a
world where meaning is just past the reader's... (more) |
|
|
The N-Plus-1th-Degree (1968) |
|
| Stephen Barr |
|
A mathematician is accused of murdering a man who flirted with his wife. Her faith in him (which is so strong, she describes it as being to the n-plus-1th degree) allows her to figure out how and by... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Oracle (2000) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
The protagonist, Robert Stoney is a british mathematician who worked on German codes during WW II, was greatly affected by the death of a close friend, and was later persecuted for his homosexuality. ... (more) |
|
|
The Oxford Murders (2004) |
|
| Guillermo Martinez |
|
A young, Argentinian mathematician visiting the UK is drawn into a murder mystery when his landlord (a woman who had worked as a code breaker during World War II) is killed. A clue and the words "The... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Pythagorean Crimes (2006) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
This murder mystery takes place amid the exciting developments occurring in the mathematical and artistic communities in Europe between 1900 and 1931. Much of what one will learn by reading this book... (more) |
|
|
Q.E.D. (1984) |
|
| Bruce Stanley Burdick |
|
The "Q.E.D." from the title of this short story published in Analog
(volume 104 #12, December 1984, pp. 96-112) is the latin expression "quod
erat demonstratum" that is meant to conclude a proof and... (more) |
|
|
The Shackles of Conviction (2008) |
|
| James R. Meyer |
|
This novel intersperses a fictionalized account of the life of Kurt Gödel with the modern tale of an engineer who realizes (and eventually convinces the world) that Gödel's proof was flawed and that... (more) |
|
|
Timescape (1979) |
|
| Gregory Benford |
|
On the positive side, we have a clever idea that shows some of the flavor of
modern mathematical physics, some positive comments about mathematics and
mathematical name-dropping, and even some mathematical... (more) |
|
|
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture (1992) |
|
| Apostolos Doxiadis |
|
This novel, recently (2000) translated from Greek, follows the attempts of
fictional mathematician Petros Papachristos to prove Goldbach's
Conjecture (that every even number greater than two is the sum... (more) |
|
