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3-adica (2018) |
 | Greg Egan |
|
Sentient characters in a horrific video game combining Jack the Ripper and vampires seek to escape to another game called 3-adica where things are strange but peaceful.
This is one of a series of stories... (more) |
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36 Arguments for the Existence of God (2010) |
 | Rebecca Goldstein |
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This new novel by Rebecca Goldstein, whose Strange Attractors is one of my favorite works of mathematical fiction, features as two main characters a woman known as "the goddess of game theory" and a Hasidic... (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 a University Math Professor (2001) |
|
| Donald A. Buckeye |
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This slim book is a very easy, unassuming, pleasant read which adults and sixth graders can both read with joy. It is an autobiographical fictionalization of some parts of a mathematics teacher's life.... (more) |
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Against the Day (2006) |
|
| Thomas Pynchon |
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This novel, set in the time frame 1890s to 1920s interleaves several
plots and styles, from boys' adventures to peacetime spies to gunslingers'
revenges. The forces of progress stomp over all the... (more) |
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The Almond Tree (2012) |
|
| Michelle Cohen Corasanti |
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A poor Palestinian boy growing up in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s endures persecution but eventually becomes a successful scientific researcher because of his mathematical skills.
The author, who... (more) |
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Annika Riz, Math Whiz (Franklin School Friends) (2014) |
|
| Claudia Mills |
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Recently I have been looking for math books for my young children when I came across Annika Riz, Math Whiz by Claudia Mills. I checked the archives of your site and it appears that this book is not on... (more) |
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Antibodies (2000) |
|
| Charles Stross |
|
P vs NP is perhaps the greatest problem of theoretical computer science,
and has attracted attention of a range of mathematicians, from logic
to topology. It's one of the seven Clay Millennium Prize... (more) |
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The Argentine Ant (2017) |
|
| T.C. Boyle |
|
A mathematician, his wife, and their baby who suffers from a skin sensitivity condition uproot their lives and move to a new city:
This was an adventure, pure and simple. Or more than an adventure;... (more) |
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The Arnold Proof (2002) |
|
| Jessica Francis Kane |
|
This short story begins with a quote from Philip E.B. Jourdain's essay "The Nature of Mathematics". In the quote, he explains how in the process of carrying out a complicated computation, one may want... (more) |
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The Arrows of Time [Orthogonal Book Three] (2014) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
Egan's "Orthogonal Trilogy" concludes with the final part of the journey of the Peerless and its crew of scientists, mathematicians and engineers hoping to find a way to save their homeworld from destruction.... (more) |
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The Axiom of Choice (2011) |
|
| David W. Goldman |
|
A ``choose-your-own-adventure'' story about a guitarist who must face the consequences of his decision to take a plane ride that ended in disaster. A brief but very nice discussion of The Axiom of Choice... (more) |
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Axiom of Dreams (2023) |
|
| Arula Ratnakar |
|
An aspiring mathematician gets a brain implant designed to aid her research on Gödel Incompleteness in the hopes that it will help her get accepted into a PhD program. But, against the advice of... (more) |
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The Banana Girls (2017) |
|
| Karim F. Hirji |
|
This rare example of African mathematical fiction was written by a Fellow of the Tanzania Academy of Sciences who previously won awards for his work on the statistical analysis of small sample discrete... (more) |
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Battle of the Frog and the Mouse (1984) |
|
| John Hays |
|
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) |
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Blasphemy (2008) |
|
| Douglas Preston |
|
Douglas Preston's novel, “Blasphemy”, contains a few mathematical references that come up when scientists encounter “God” at the (hypothetical) world's largest particle collider,... (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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Bloom (1998) |
|
| Wil McCarthy |
|
In between blooms of a deadly manmade fungus, the humans discuss cellular automata (especially Conway's Game of Life) and complexity theory.
Thanks to Rob Milson for suggesting this book.
(more) |
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Bone Chase (2020) |
|
| Weston Ochse |
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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) |
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Book of Knut: a novel by Knut Knudson (2012) |
|
| Halvor Aakhus |
|
Halvor Aakhus, who has an undergraduate degree in math and an MFA in writing, wrote this unusual work of fiction that takes the form of a novel by an apparently dead author named Knut Knudson which has... (more) |
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The Boy Who Escaped Paradise (2016) |
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| J.M. Lee (author) / Chi-Young Kim (translator) |
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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) |
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By a Fluke (1955) |
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| Arthur Porges |
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A liver fluke describes its life (from hatching from an egg to its final moments) to an alien who is recording it. As it turns out, these trematatode parasites are not as dumb as we think. In fact, they... (more) |
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Cantor’s Dragon (2014) |
|
| Craig DeLancy |
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An absolutely fabulous tale of a man outwitting the devil, reminiscent of “The Devil and Simon Flagg” and in a very creative way. George Cantor, who has been hospitalized with mental exhaustion from... (more) |
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Cardano and the Case of the Cubic (2005) |
|
| Jeff Adams |
|
This parody of early 20th century "Hard Boiled Private Detective" novels is instead a short story about 16th century mathematician Gerolamo Cardano.
Its opening paragraphs clearly set the tone:
It... (more) |
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Le Cas de Sophie K. (2005) |
|
| Jean-Frangois Peyret (playwright and director) |
|
This play about Sofya Kovalevskaya emphasizes her nihilistic leanings (as expressed in Kovalevskaya's own fiction). The production featured unusual modern staging, such as having three actresses portraying... (more) |
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Case of Lies (2005) |
|
| Perri O'Shaughnessy |
|
An old, unsolved casino murder becomes mathematical when three of the witnesses turn out to have been math students using their skills to win at gambling. Quite a bit of detailed discussion of number... (more) |
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The Center of the Universe (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
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This short story was intended to serve two different purposes. On the one hand it is a glimpse into the lives and interactions of mathematics graduate students. And, on the other, it addresses the philosophical... (more) |
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A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel (2007) |
|
| Gaurav Suri / Hartosh Singh Bal |
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The intertwined stories of Ravi, a Stanford student taking a course on "Infinity" in the 1980's, and his grandfather who was jailed for blasphemy in New Jersey in 1919 constitute a philosophical investigation... (more) |
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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) |
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City of Infinite Bridges (2007) |
|
| Alex Rose |
|
A very short, definitely fictional but delightful little tale about Katharina Gsell, Euler's wife. In this fictional account, Katharina is supposed to have displayed a graph of the 7 Konigsberg bridges... (more) |
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The Clockwork Rocket [Orthogonal Book One] (2011) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
Egan's "Orthogonal Trilogy" explains how the Peerless and its crew of scientists, mathematicians and engineers was launched in the hope if find a way to save their homeworld from destruction. A major... (more) |
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Cocoon of Terror (2008) |
|
| Jason Earls |
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The protagonist in the latest novel by Jason Earls spends his time hunting down the evil and semi-mystical artist Zelian, and much of his spare time finding integers with interesting aesthetic and number... (more) |
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La Conjecture de Syracuse (2008) |
|
| Antoine Billot |
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Although in reality the Collatz Conjecture remains unresolved, in Billot's novel the problem was famously solved by Etienne Thèseus, who figured out the solution while he fought for France in Algeria... (more) |
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Continuity (1999) |
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| Buzz Mauro |
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This short story cleverly uses the epsilon-delta definition of continuity of a function to discuss the changing self-esteem of a character over time. After briefly recalling the rigorous definition, it... (more) |
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Continuums (2008) |
|
| Robert Carr |
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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) |
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The Countable (2011) |
|
| Ken Liu |
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An autistic boy finds comfort in Cantor's discovery that the set of fractions is greatly outnumbered by the set of irrationals. (See, for example, Cantor's Diagonal Argument.)
I did not much enjoy... (more) |
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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) |
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Dante Dreams (1998) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
|
There is an interpretation of Dante's "Divine Comedy" as a mystical description of the universe as a hypersphere (see "Dante and the 3-sphere"
American Journal of Physics -- December 1979 -- Volume... (more) |
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Dark Integers (2007) |
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| 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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Delicious Rivers (2006) |
|
| Ellen Maddow |
|
This collage of absurd and entertaining scenes at a NYC post office (and the music and choreography to which they are performed) were all inspired by the mathematics of Penrose Tilings. In particular,... (more) |
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The Devotion of Suspect X [Yôgisha X no kenshin] (2005) |
|
| Keigo Higashino |
|
Reclusive high school math teacher Tetsuya Ishigami is "devoted" to two things: his math research and his neighbor, Yasuko Hanaoka. When Hanaoka and her daughter kill her abusive ex-husband, they are... (more) |
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Diary of a Bad Year (2007) |
|
| John Maxwell Coetzee |
|
J.M. Coetzee has a Nobel Prize in literature (2003) and an undergraduate degree in mathematics (University of Cape Town, 1961). It is therefore not too surprising to find him included in my list of mathematical... (more) |
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Diaspora (1998) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
"This is the only science-fiction book I have ever
read to define the term fiber bundle."
said contributor David Moews of this book. The same for me, though I was
disappointed to see that it was... (more) |
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A Disappearing Number (2007) |
|
| Simon McBurney |
|
Scenes of Srinivasa Ramanujan's collaboration with G.H. Hardy around the time of World War I are mixed in with modern storylines including an Indian physicist who has applied Ramanujan's work to String... (more) |
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Disciple of the Masses (2008) |
|
| Xujun Eberlein |
|
A pathos-filled short story set in rural China toward the end of Mao's Cultural Revolution. It captures beautifully the sense of loss inherent in a centrally-directed and enforced revolution, with the... (more) |
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Distress (1995) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
My friends and I are all in agreement on this one: this book starts
out great (at a mathematical physics conference where people are
talking about the latest theories of quantum gravity) but then it
degenerates... (more) |
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The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli (2019) |
|
| W.A.W. Parker |
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This novel is a biography of Fra Luca Pacioli in fictionalized form. Pacioli who lived from 1447 to 1517 was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar who authored one of the first printed mathematics... (more) |
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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) |
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A Doubter's Almanac (2016) |
|
| Ethan Canin |
|
This literary novel follows the life of the fictional mathematical genius Milo Andret from his youth in Michigan, though his education at Berkeley and the winning of a Fields Medal as a Princeton math... (more) |
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Dude, can you count? (2010) |
|
| Christian Constanda |
|
Utilizing the entertaining contrivance of an extraterrestrial who visits human math conferences to evaluate our intelligence, Constanda tells us what he thinks is wrong with math education today. Following... (more) |
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E-Z Calculus [Calculus by Discovery] (1982) |
|
| Douglas Downing |
|
"E-Z Calculus", which was previously published under the titles "Calculus the Easy Way" and "Calculus by Discovery", aims to teach the fundamentals of calculus through the adventures of a man who has washed... (more) |
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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) |
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An Elegant Solution (2013) |
|
| Paul Robertson |
|
A fictionalized account of the life of Leonhard Euler, focusing on his relationship with the Bernoullis and told from the perspective of Christian theology. The novel also takes on aspects of a murder... (more) |
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The Elusive Chauffeur (2008) |
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| David H. Brown |
|
This mystery novel appears to have been conceived as a means for the author to "spread the word" about two things that are important to him: mathematics and his Christian faith. In it, a private detective... (more) |
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The Eternal Flame [Orthogonal Book Two] (2012) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
This second novel in Egan's "Orthogonal Trilogy" continues to follow the scientific and mathematical discoveries of creatures on a space ship hoping to find a way to save their home world. That plot and... (more) |
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Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879) |
|
| Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) |
|
I have long known that mathematician Charles Dodgson, who wrote the famous Alice stories under the pseudonym "Lewis Carroll", also wrote a book defending Euclid's ancient text as the best for teaching... (more) |
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Evil Genius (2005) |
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| 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) |
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The Exception (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
Written in the form of a dialogue between a man in a nursing home and his grandchild, this short story describes an undergraduate research project that produces a surprising answer to one of the most famous... (more) |
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Fermat's Best Theorem (1995) |
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| Janet Kagan |
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A student comes up with what appears to be a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. So, she gives it to her professor hoping that he will find a mistake in it (see below). It turns out that the professor is... (more) |
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The Finan-seer (1949) |
|
| Edward L. Locke |
|
I have to admit that this particular story blew me away for multiple reasons. It is one of the most mathematical of tales ever to appear in pulp magazines, and pound-for-pound in terms of length (so... (more) |
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The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem (2000) |
|
| Rinne Groff |
|
I think this play about a number theory conference at the British seaside at the turn of the 20th century may be misunderstood. The plot revolves around the neuroses of the senior researcher, Moses Vazsonyi,... (more) |
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Flowers Stained with Moonlight (2005) |
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| Catherine Shaw |
|
In this sequel to The Three-Body Problem, Vanessa Duncan is called upon to save an innocent young woman, falsely suspected of murdering her older and unlikable husband. Although there is no mathematics... (more) |
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La formule de Stokes, roman (2016) |
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| Michèle Audin |
|
The author, a professional mathematician as well as a member of the Oulipo literary group, wrote this unusual novel whose protagonist is not a person or animal but a formula. At least, that is what I... (more) |
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The Four-Color Problem (1971) |
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| Barrington J. Bayley |
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A story written in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness style a la William S. Burroughs concerning the discovery of previously unknown countries on the Earth whose existence provides a counter-example... (more) |
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The Four-Color Puzzle: Falling Off the Map (2013) |
|
| Lior Samson |
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A math professor becomes intrigued with a high school student he meets at an online tutoring site when she presents him with what appears to be a short and very clever proof of the four-color theorem.... (more) |
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Futurama (Episode: The Prisoner of Benda) (2011) |
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| Ken Keeler (writer) / Stephen Sandoval (director) |
|
Although many episodes contain mathematical "in jokes", from the point of view of mathematical fiction, the most notable episode of Futurama was "The Prisoner of Benda" (2011). In that episode, a machine... (more) |
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The Geometrics of Johnny Day (1941) |
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| Nelson Bond |
|
Old MacDonald had a firm, and in that firm he had a young mathematician who wanted to win his daughter's hand in marriage. MacDonald was skeptical:
""Ye want a job, eh? And just what is it that ye... (more) |
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Getting Somewhere (1995) |
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| Jenny Pausacker |
|
In this Australian novel for teenagers, a student who lives in the shadow of her twin is able to find her own identity and some self-respect with the help of a maths teacher. The teacher challenges her... (more) |
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God and Stephen Hawking (2000) |
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| Robin Hawdon |
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Although most people know him as a "scientist", Stephen Hawking is probably the best known living mathematician. (Technically, he is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.) This play examines his life and work.
(more) |
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God Doesn't Shoot Craps (2006) |
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| Richard Armstrong |
|
Danny Pellegrino is a con artist who joins up with inventor/genius Virgil Kirk to market a mathematical get-rich-quick scheme which, amazingly, actually works.
The gambling scheme which Kirk calls... (more) |
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Golden Math [Suugaku Golden] (2019) |
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| Kuramaru Tatsuhiko |
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Haruichi Onoda is a high school student who aspires to represent Japan in the IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad). He meets a girl (Mami Nanase) who shares his passion. Though seemingly airheaded,... (more) |
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Goldman's Theorem (2009) |
|
| R.J. Stern |
|
Hired by the little-known "University of Northern Vermont", Professor Goldman does not seem to be living up to his promise as a great math researcher. Under pressure from his superiors, he claims to have... (more) |
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Gospel Truths (2007) |
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| 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) |
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Hajime's Algorithm (2017) |
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| Mihara Kazuto |
|
A bitter old mathematician discovers a young prodigy while visiting the little Japanese island where he grew up in this ten volume manga series that ran from 2017-2020.
Uchida Yutaka is a mathematician... (more) |
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Hamlet and Pfister Forms - A Tragedy in Four Acts (1992) |
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| Jan Minac |
|
An absurd combination of comedy, advanced mathematics, and Shakespearean tragedy by Western University math professor Ján Mináč which was performed at the mathematical institute in Oberwolfach,... (more) |
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The Hollow Man (1993) |
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| Dan Simmons |
|
A psychic mathematician is driven to the edge of insanity as his life partner approaches death. The mathematician's research is described explicitly -- as are some of the horrific events that befall... (more) |
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The Humans: A Novel (2013) |
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| Matt Haig |
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After Cambridge mathematician Andrew Martin proves the Riemann Hypothesis, he is replaced by an alien whose job it is to prevent news of the discovery from spreading as it is their belief that humans are... (more) |
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Incandescence (2008) |
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| Greg Egan |
|
This "hard SF" novel focuses on the scientific progress of aliens living on a planet near the galactic center. Presumably because the curvature of space was obvious to them from the start (while it took... (more) |
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Incomplete Proofs (2012) |
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| John Chu |
|
This unusual piece combines equal parts fashion industry and math research, with a dash of fantasy and just a pinch of homo-eroticism. Grant does a favor for his old partner, Duncan, by modeling his new... (more) |
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Infinities (2002) |
|
| John Barrow |
|
This play, written by Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow, has been produced and performed in Italy (Milan and Valencia). It is made up of five separate vignettes several of which touch on the deep mathematics... (more) |
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Infinities (2010) |
|
| Vandana Singh |
|
A nicely written story about Abdul Karim, a mathematics teacher at the local municipal school, set against the backdrop of the religious turmoil between Hindus and Muslims in India. I couldn't quite... (more) |
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Infinity (1996) |
|
| Patricia Broderick |
|
It's about the early years of Richard Feynman, up to the completion
of the Manhattan Project, and the death of his wife.
What I like particularily is a scene in NY's Chinatown where [Feynman]
races... (more) |
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Instantiation (2019) |
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| Greg Egan |
|
In this sequel to 3-adica, the conscious video game characters plan an escape that feels like a cross between Mission Impossible and Inception, but with the addition of famous mathematicians sitting around... (more) |
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The Integral: A Horror Story (2009) |
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| 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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Into Thin Air (2000) |
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| Colin Adams |
|
This was the first of Colin Adams' ``Mathematically Bent'' columns for the Mathematical Intelligencer, published back in Vol.22, No. 1, 2000. It combines many of the analogies between mountain climbing... (more) |
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The Ishango Bone (2012) |
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| Paul Hastings Wilson |
|
Amiele becomes the first female student at Trinity College and goes on to disprove the Riemann Hypothesis at the age of 26, but is denied the Fields Medal. Written as if it were her life story recorded... (more) |
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It's My Turn (1980) |
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| Claudia Weill (director) |
|
About a mathematician who writes a proof of the Snake Lemma at the
speed of
light. Her love interest was Michael Douglas, some sort of athlete.
One mathematician I know claims he wrote a paper just... (more) |
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Izzy at the Lucky Three (1996) |
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| Eliot Fintushel |
|
There are two kinds of weird: good weird and bad weird. This story
is the third kind. I mean, what can you say about a story in which the
Yiddishe mystic Izzy encounters
the demon spirit who created... (more) |
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The Jester and the Mathematician (2000) |
|
| Alan R. Gordon |
|
A short historical fiction piece involving Leonardo of Pisa ("Fibonacci"). Interesting story which features Fibonacci talking briefly about his rabbit-series/sequence, his abacus-duel with Pisa's foremost... (more) |
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Journey into Geometries (1997) |
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| Marta Sved |
|
It is styled after a frequently-used device: "Alice in X", where X can be any kind of space which you wish to explain to the gentle reader. In this instance, Alice, along with Lewis Carroll and a Doctor... (more) |
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Journey to the Center of Mathematics (2006) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A parody of the classic Jules Verne tale, which reads like what Woody Allen would have written if he had taken math instead of philosophy at NYU:
The next day, we booked travel on a steamer across the... (more) |
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The Kissing Number (1992) |
|
| Ian Stewart |
|
Published as part of his "Mathematical Recreations" column in Scientific
American (February 1992), this story concerns human colonists on Mars
who are trying to figure out how many non-overlapping "circular"... (more) |
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Küplerin Savasi (2021) |
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| Ahmet Baki Yerli |
|
This Turkish novel for young adults appears to be a fictionalized account of the dispute between Tartaglia and Cardano over the solution to cubic equations. A nice account of the true story can be found here in Quanta Magazine, but I'm afraid I do not know anything more about Yerli's book which so far has only been published in Turkish. (more) |
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The Last Theorem (2008) |
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| 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) |
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The Last Theorem (2008) |
|
| Buzz Mauro |
|
A depressed music professor ponders Fermat's Last Theorem and the implications of its proof by Andrew Wiles.
Like many of Mauro's other stories, this one is very well written, focusing not so much on... (more) |
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Let's Consider Two Spherical Chickens (2016) |
|
| Tommaso Bolognesi |
|
Although it takes the form of a murder mystery, Bolognesi's "Let's Consider Two Spherical Chickens" really is more of an essay than a work of fiction. Like the other chapters from the collection in which... (more) |
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Let's Play With Numbers [Suuji de Asobo] (2018) |
|
| Murako Kinuta |
|
The story follows Tateki Yokobe, a freshman in the math department of Yoshida University. Though formerly a top student, Yokobe quickly realises his eidetic memory is of no use in understanding highly... (more) |
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Letters From Incompleteness (2021) |
|
| Jonah Howell |
|
This creative work of fiction takes the form of love letters from an unidentified narrator who has become obsessed with Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorems.
Some of the discussion of Gödel's... (more) |
|
|
Letters to a Young Mathematician (2006) |
|
| Ian Stewart |
|
I listed this one here before I had a chance to read it and am now wondering whether it should be counted as fiction at all. This is an excellent book which provides a lot of useful information about... (more) |
|
|
Life After Genius (2008) |
|
| M. Ann Jacoby |
|
Although his family would normally expect him to stay in their small town and take over the family business (a combination of a furniture store and funeral home), Mead Fegley's "genius" gives him the unprecedented... (more) |
|
|
life.exe (2006) |
|
| Jason Rogers |
|
This work of fiction is not strictly narrative. It is hard to say what is happening since the characters live in the world of "the matrix". Not like the Wachowski Bros.'s epic trilogy of films (though... (more) |
|
|
Lines of Longitude (1997) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
|
The story tries to delve into Hawking's idea of imaginary time - how it may occur that at the beginning of the universe, time and space were ambiguously defined, smeared out into each other as a flattened... (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) |
|
|
Lost in the Math Museum (2022) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
Teenager Kallie, who doesn't particularly care for math, gets trapped in a math museum with her father and his friend Maria. They endure horrific dangers and meet the ghosts of famous mathematicians (as... (more) |
|
|
Lucy and David and the God Equation (2011) |
|
| Alan McKenzie |
|
Lucy, a freshman at a Scottish University, and David, the graduate student who leads the problem sessions for her physics class, discuss the mathematical and philosophical implications of Gödel's First... (more) |
|
|
Machines Like Me (2019) |
|
| Ian McEwan |
|
There are many ways to describe this book without mentioning mathematics: It is a romance between Charlie (a slacker who dabbles in day-trading) and Miranda (the law student who lives in the apartment... (more) |
|
|
Mad Destroyer (1930) |
|
| Fletcher Pratt |
|
The story is about a mathematician/astronomer who has discovered an exact solution to the multi-body problem in gravitation i.e. a formula which can easily calculate the positions and velocities of N... (more) |
|
|
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (2006) |
|
| Janna Levin
|
|
This novel about Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel contains much that has already been said many times before, and occasionally "tries too hard" artistically. Still I very much enjoyed reading it, and even... (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) |
|
|
The Magic Two-Horn (1949) |
|
| Sergey Pavlovich Bobrov |
|
I barely know anything about this Russian children's book that takes place in a magical mathematical world. Maxim Arnold mentioned it to me at a conference in Oaxaca and told me only that many mathematicians cite it as a source of their interest in mathematics. If you know any more details, please write to let me know.
(more) |
|
|
The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015) |
|
| Matt Brown (Screenwriter and Director) |
|
This biographical film starring Dev Patel as Ramanujan and Jeremy Irons as Hardy is based on the biography of the same name by Robert Kaniglel. Because it is a rather reliable adaptation of that non-fictional... (more) |
|
|
Mandelbrot the Magnificent (2017) |
|
| Liz Ziemska |
|
This novella is what I would call a "feel good fantasy" about the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot who coined the term fractal.
It takes the form of a memoir written by an elderly Mandelbrot recalling... (more) |
|
|
The Martian (2014) |
|
| Andy Weir |
|
An astronaut is stranded alone on Mars and must figure out how to survive until he can be rescued.
My wife and I both loved this "hard SF" novel (soon to be a movie). But, we disagreed about whether... (more) |
|
|
The Masters (1963) |
|
| Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
This short story, which takes place in a world where society is medieval and the sun is seen less than once per year, focuses on the mathematical advances brought about by the primary protagonist, Ganil.... (more) |
|
|
Math Girls (2007) |
|
| Hiroshi Yuki |
|
Three high school friends work through some difficult mathematical ideas in this book, recently translated into English from the Japanese original.
The author is apparently well known in Japan for his... (more) |
|
|
The Math Olympian (2015) |
|
| Richard Hoshino |
|
A novel about a girl hoping to be on the Canadian team to the International Mathematical Olypmiad written by someone who should know what it is like. (FYI The author earned a silver medal as part of the... (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) |
|
|
Math Takes a Holiday (2001) |
|
| Paul Di Filippo |
|
Saint Hubert and Saint Barbara, the two patron saints of mathematics,
pay a visit to a devout Catholic mathematics professor who has been
praying for a mathematical miracle to silence his mockers.... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Mathematician's Shiva (2014) |
|
| Stuart Rojstaczer |
|
When Rachela Karnokovich dies, her family's attempt to conduct the Jewish mourning ritual of sitting shiva is disturbed by the many strangers who descend on her Madison, WI home. Although she never won... (more) |
|
|
The Mathematics of Nina Gluckstein (1985) |
|
| Esther Vilar |
|
When Argentina's most famous singer dies in an accident during a concert, his unpopular wife, Nina Gluckstein, commits suicide. Yet, since public opinion of her was so low (and perhaps because she was... (more) |
|
|
Maths on a Plane (2008) |
|
| P T |
|
This story, about a student flirting with the attractive woman in the seat next to him on a plane, won the student category of the 2008 New Writers Award from Cambridge University's ``Plus+ Magazine''.... (more) |
|
|
Maxwell's Equations (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
James Clerk Maxwell was the 19th century theoretician who discovered electro-magnetic waves. He is often described as a "physicist", but I would argue that he was a mathematician. Certainly some of his... (more) |
|
|
Milo and Sylvie (2000) |
|
| Eliot Fintushel |
|
"Shapeshifting is treated as a form of Banach-Tarski
equidecomposition. And part of a Zorn's Lemma proof
is given explicitly."
This story appeared in the March 2000... (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) |
|
|
Morte di un matematico napoletano (1992) |
|
| Mario Martone (director) |
|
"This movie describes the last day in [the] life of a
famous Italian mathematician: Renato Caccioppoli. He was a fascinating and
discussed person in Naples' political and cultural life. [A] member... (more) |
|
|
Murder on the Einstein Express (2016) |
|
| Harun Šiljak |
|
An essay containing many interesting remarks and anecdotes about mathematics and mathematical physics presented in the form of a dialogue between a professor and students. Topics covered include entropy,... (more) |
|
|
Night of the Eerie Equations (2015) |
|
| Robert Black |
|
Another sequel to Night of the Paranormal Patterns about teenager Lennie Miller who solves middle-school mathematical problems for vampires, wizards, and other monsters. This time, she not only has to... (more) |
|
|
Night of the Frightening Fractions (2015) |
|
| Robert Black |
|
In this sequel to Night of the Paranormal Patterns, teenager Lennie Miller continues to solve mathematical problems to save her town from ghosts and zombies.
I haven't read this young adult novel. I hope to get a chance to do so someday and will post more information here if I do. Or, if you have read it, please write to let me know what you thought of it, and I'll post your review here!
(more) |
|
|
Night of the Paranormal Patterns (2014) |
|
| Robert Black |
|
A young adult novel that uses the fantasy adventure genre to introduce pre-algebra concepts. The protagonist, a seventh grader named Lennie, has been chosen as the "pattern finder" for werewolves, vampires... (more) |
|
|
Nightscape: The Dreams of Devils (2012) |
|
| David W. Edwards |
|
A teenage math prodigy is contacted by other-worldly beings through his nightmares. As the separation between dream and reality seems to disappear, he faces a supernatural threat with the help of a religious... (more) |
|
|
No One You Know (2008) |
|
| Michelle Richmond |
|
Having felt overshadowed by her mathematician older sister when she was alive, the main character becomes obsessed with her murder after the sister is killed. Using her sister's notebook describing her... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Normed Trek (2014) |
|
| Harun Šiljak |
|
This short story is a parody that combines elements of Star Trek with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland using concepts and terminology from mathematics (especially analysis).
Limit, the final frontier.... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
The Number Devil [Der Zahlenteufel] (1997) |
|
| Hans Magnus Enzensberger |
|
"The title may be translated as The
Counting Devil, or maybe The Number Devil, and it has a subtitle that
translates to 'a pillowbook for everyone
who is afraid of math'. Enzensberger is a respected... (more) |
|
|
|
|
One (1995) |
|
| George Alec Effinger |
|
Two interstellar searchers for alien life, after endless failures, must
confront what went wrong in their understanding of Drake's equation, the
famed formula that allegedly estimates the odds of interstellar... (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) |
|
|
Panda Ray (1996) |
|
| Michael Kandel |
|
This science fiction novel is about a dysfunctional family of superbeings (aliens? mutants? humans from the future?) in modern America. It reminds me a bit of the writings of Stanislaw Lem, which is not... (more) |
|
|
The Parrot's Theorem (2000) |
|
| Denis Guedj |
|
This is an ambitious novel, a magical fantasy about a talking parrot bought at a flea market in France who, with the help of the personal library of a reclusive mathematical genius, teaches some children... (more) |
|
|
Partition (2003) |
|
| Ira Hauptman |
|
According to Ken Ribet's review of the San Francisco production in the Notices of the AMS, this play about the interaction between the mathematicians Hardy and Ramanujan explores the "partitions" that... (more) |
|
|
Perelman’s Refusal [Les Refus de Grigori Perelman]
(2017) |
|
| Philippe Zaouati |
|
I was quite concerned when I first heard that the American Mathematical Society was publishing this "novel"
that promised "to immerse [the reader] in the tormented mind" of Grigori Perelman. I became... (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) |
|
|
Pop Quiz (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
An algebraic geometer is called in when messages from an alien spacecraft appear to be asking questions about projective varieties. Though it may at first appear to be another "mathematics as a common... (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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Prince of Mathematics: Carl Friedrich Gauss (2006) |
|
| Margaret B.W. Tent |
|
A fictionalized account of the life and achievements of one of history's greatest mathematicians, told in a style which is appropriate for children but also maintains the interest of adult readers.
(I'm... (more) |
|
|
Progress (2005) |
|
| Alex Kasman |
|
The mathematics of ancient Egypt can look very strange to us today. For example, although they did not have many fractions, they did know about the number 2/3. Strangely, however, it took a page of computation... (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) |
|
|
Pythagoras's Darkest Hour (2007) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
A humorous short story from the author of Mathematically Bent which tells the true story of the discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem. Well, actually, perhaps it isn't exactly true...but it is so good,... (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) |
|
|
Quaternia (2015) |
|
| Tom Petsinis |
|
Ivan, the main character in Tom Petsinis' Quaternia, is a fictional teenager who spends a lot of his time and energy on playing video games. Ivan goes beyond merely devoting so much time to this hobby... (more) |
|
|
Question 3 (2016) |
|
| Martin Sandahl (Director and Writer) |
|
A short film about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome who competes in the International Mathematical Olympiad. However, neither the mathematical problems nor the boy's success in the competition is the main... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Raven and the Writing Desk (2019) |
|
| Ian T. Durham |
|
In this work -- which is more of a Socratic dialogue utilizing characters from Lewis Carroll's fiction than it is a work of fiction itself -- the author explores philosophical questions regarding the existence... (more) |
|
|
Der Rechenmeister [aka The Mathematician] (1999) |
|
| Dieter Jörgensen |
|
When I browsed through your list I found one book missing that I have in my library: "Der Rechenmeister" by Dieter Jörgensen is a novel describing the life of Niccolo Tartaglia in Venice and his battle... (more) |
|
|
Report from the Ambassador to Cida-2 (2008) |
|
| Clifton Cunningham |
|
The human selected to communicate with the aquatic aliens of Cida-2 is surprised to learn that their number system differs from our own. In particular, although our communication with the extra-terrestrials... (more) |
|
|
Ripples in the Dirac Sea (1988) |
|
| Geoffrey A. Landis |
|
A time machine story based on a combination of Hilbert's Hotel analogy and the "Fermi Sea". We read of the travels of the main character to the ancient past, to the San Francisco earthquake and to the... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Rose Acacia (1995) |
|
| Ralph P. Boas, Jr. |
|
"A computer makes a deal with the devil, with the
usual escape clause: if it can ask a question the devil cannot answer, the
computer gets the information for free. As the devil puts it, no logical
paradoxes,... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Schild's Ladder (2002) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
Far in the future, the mathematical theory of "quantum graph theory" is the theory of
physics. Unlike the current theories of relativity and quantum physics,
which are obviously approximations that... (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 his (more) |
|
|
Singleton (2002) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
This story involves a physicist and a mathematician who have a child -- well, sort of -- that they have specially designed to remain in a "classical" state (as opposed to a quantum superposition of states)... (more) |
|
|
Sophie's Diary (2004) |
|
| Dora Musielak |
|
Sophie Germain famously studied mathematics at night by candlelight despite her parents' insistence that she give up this unfeminine discipline. She then went on to become one of the great mathematician's... (more) |
|
|
Squate (2022) |
|
| Tom Blackford |
|
In this cute story, a thirteen year old girl becomes good friends with the square root of eight. From "Squate", she learns not only facts about math but also things about other people who are working... (more) |
|
|
Stella Maris (2022) |
|
| Cormac McCarthy |
|
Readers of McCarthy's 2022 novel The Passenger learn quickly that its protagonist's sister was a mathematical prodigy who committed suicide. That isolated fact provides motivation for the remainder of... (more) |
|
|
Storm: The Chronicles of Pandarve (1993) |
|
| Martin Lodewijk (writer) / Don Lawrence (artist) |
|
Storm was a long-running Dutch science fiction comic book series that was also serialized in many English publications.
Mathematics arose in a subplot where the living planet, Pandarve, is distracted... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything (2023) |
|
| Kara Gnodde |
|
Mimi Brotherton is a Foley artist in London who creates sound effects for movies. There is not much mathematics in that, but three of the men in her life are mathematicians: her father, her brother, and... (more) |
|
|
Thirteen Diamonds (2000) |
|
| Alan Cook |
|
A murder mystery set in a retirement community in Chapel Hill, NC. During a bridge game at the club, one of the members, a Nobel-laureate in Economics, keels over and dies after receiving a perfect hand... (more) |
|
|
Three Cornered Wheel (1963) |
|
| Poul Anderson |
|
Sometimes a surprising mathematical fact will inspire a science fiction story to illustrate it. I suspect that is what happened with this story that comes up with a contrived circumstance in which the... (more) |
|
|
Three Days in Karlikania (1964) |
|
| Vladimir Levshin |
|
A children's fantasy novel written in Russian. I have not been able to find much about it but Rob Milson says:
Three children travel to Karlikania, an enchanted land populated by numerals. Here they... (more) |
|
|
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (2015) |
|
| Sydney Padua |
|
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) |
|
|
Topsy-turvy (Sans Dessus Dessous) (1889) |
|
| Jules Verne |
|
The members of the Gun Club want to use a giant cannon's recoil to change the Earth's rotation axis, so they can exploit the presumed coalfields at the North Pole. An unfortunate side effect is that... (more) |
|
|
Travelling Salesman (2012) |
|
| Andy Lanzone (writer) / Timothy Lanzone (director and writer) |
|
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) |
|
|
Turing (A Novel About Computation) (2003) |
|
| Christos Papadimitriou |
|
The four vertices of an unlikely love "rectangle" are (a) a dying, maverick cryptographer, (b) a pregnant Internet wiz, (c) a romantic middle-aged Greek archaeologist and (d) Turing, an artificially intelligent... (more) |
|
|
Twenty-seven Uses for Imaginary Numbers (2009) |
|
| Buzz Mauro |
|
A teenage boy's discovery of the joys of Euler's formula coincides with the awakening of his homosexual desires. The author's mathematical understanding is very good, and the story reminded me of young... (more) |
|
|
Uniform Convergence: A One-Woman Play (2016) |
|
| Corrine Yap |
|
This play about race, gender and math was written and first performed by Corrine Yap when she was a math/theater double major at Sarah Lawrence College. It has evolved and changed and continued to be... (more) |
|
|
A Universe of Sufficient Size (2019) |
|
| Miriam Sved |
|
It is only after the death of her father that an Australian sculptor learns that her mother was one of five Hungarian Jews mathematicians who worked on math research together in a public park as Hitler... (more) |
|
|
The Unknowns: A Mystery (2009) |
|
| Benedict Carey |
|
A novel for middle school children which aims to teach mathematical concepts as the young protagonists try to solve the mystery of the disappearances in their neighborhood.
I thoroughly enjoyed the... (more) |
|
|
Wang's Carpets (1995) |
|
| Greg Egan |
|
This short story about a life form based on Wang Tiles first appeared in 1995 in Greg Bear's New Legends collection but was later expanded into an entire novel. For more information, see my entry on the... (more) |
|
|
|
|
White Light, or What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? (1980) |
|
| Rudy Rucker |
|
I think the best description of this book is Naked Lunch
meets The Wild Numbers, with a cameo appearance by
Donald Duck's nephews. Happily, this book has recently been rereleased
(2001) in a new format... (more) |
|
|
Who Killed the Duke of Densmore? (1994) |
|
| Claude Berge |
|
The murder mystery in the title took
place many years ago and the only witnesses are a group of women who each
visited the crime scene for a single stretch of time. They each remember
whom they met... (more) |
|
|
Zombies and Calculus (2014) |
|
| Colin Adams |
|
The story opens with a math professor teaching his class on a seemingly ordinary day when a student who has arrived late turns out to be the first of a wave of flesh eating zombies who are running amok... (more) |
|
