 |
Abendland (Occident) (2007) |
 | Michael Köhlmeier |
|
The protagonist is an Austrian
mathematician who, according to the fictional invention of the author,
worked with Emmy Noether in Göttingen during the 'Golden Age' of
German Mathematics, i.e. before Hitler came to power. In chapter 6 we
learn a lot about Noether's life in Göttingen, Moscow, and the US.
(more) |
|
 |
Ada and the Engine (2015) |
 | Lauren Gunderson |
|
For Lauren Gunderson, whose plays all seem to be about emotionally potent mathematical subjects, a study of Ada Lovelace seems like a natural choice. Born Ada Byron (the daughter of the scandalous poet... (more) |
|
|
Ada's Room (2023) |
|
| Sharon Dodo Otoo |
|
This novel follows a woman's soul through four reincarnations, beginning in Africa in the 15th century and ending in Europe during World War II. All four are named "Ada", and one of them happens to be... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Against the Day (2006) |
|
| Thomas Pynchon |
|
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) |
|
|
Agha and Math (1946) |
|
| Vladmir Karapetoff |
|
A very funny, very creative tale of how logarithms might have been invented in ancient times, without it having had to wait for Napier.
In ancient times, ‘Agha, the Master’ was a rich landed proprietor... (more) |
|
|
Agora (2009) |
|
| Alejandro Amenábar (writer and director) / Mateo Gil (writer) |
|
A film based on the life of Hypatia of Alexandria. What little we know of the real Hypatia suggests that she was a talented mathematician and teacher (neither of them easy professions for a woman to enter... (more) |
|
|
Ahmes, the Moonchild (2010) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
The Rhind Papyrus is an Egyptian document from around 1550 BC featuring worked math problems. Its author (usually transliterated into Roman characters as Ahmes or Ahmose) is arguably the most ancient... (more) |
|
|
The Alice Network (2017) |
|
| Kate Quinn |
|
Set in the aftermath of World War II, The Alice Network follows a Bennington College sophomore Charlotte “Charlie” St. Clair on an impromptu search for her cherished cousin Rose. While fleeing... (more) |
|
|
All Scot and Bothered (2020) |
|
| Kerrigan Byrne |
|
This is another romance novel set in the 19th century featuring a female mathematician. It features such lines as:
She had very few innate talents, but the rhythm and structure of sexual relations... (more) |
|
|
All the Light We Cannot See (2014) |
|
| Anthony Doerr |
|
Doerr's Pulitzer Prize winning novel follows two children in World War II, a blind French girl hiding with her father and a valuable jewel from the museum where he works and an orphaned German boy. When... (more) |
|
|
The Almond Tree (2012) |
|
| Michelle Cohen Corasanti |
|
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) |
|
|
The Amber Shadows (2016) |
|
| Lucy Ribchester |
|
This is another thriller set at Bletchley Park during World War II. Many of the characters are described as mathematicians and Alan Turing is mentioned occasionally, but math is definitely not the center... (more) |
|
|
Apeirogon: A Novel (2020) |
|
| Colum McCann |
|
This novel with a mathematical title is based on the real lives of two peace activists, Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, both fathers of young daughters who died violently in... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Arcadia (2016) |
|
| Iain Pears |
|
As this clever novel is intentionally a hodge-podge of genres, it is a bit difficult to describe. It involves a British spy brought back from retirement in the 1960s to find a mole, a mathematician in... (more) |
|
|
Archimedes, a planetarium opera (2007) |
|
| James Dashow |
|
Opera, as in people singing and music playing, and not the
usual Latin for "works".
James Dashow has been scripting, composing, and recording
Archimedes, a "planetarium opera" for the past ten years.
It's... (more) |
|
|
The Art Student's War (2009) |
|
| Brad Leithauser |
|
In this novel, Bea Paradiso is an art student during World War II who makes portraits of wounded soldiers. (Not coincidentally, the author's mother-in-law did the same, and the book is enhanced by the... (more) |
|
|
Atomic Anna (2022) |
|
| Rachel Barenbaum |
|
I loved this plot from the moment I heard about it: A teenage math genius learns through comic books left for her by her mother that her grandmother who invented time travel needs her help solving some... (more) |
|
|
Babbage (2008) |
|
| Claire Barker (writer-director) / Eamon Wyse (writer) |
|
A 2010 movie sponsored by the British Council and directed by Claire Barker. It is a short, 15-minute vignette, a dramatization of a fictional dinner conversation between Charles Babbage, his religious... (more) |
|
|
The Bangalore Detectives Club (2022) |
|
| Harini Narendra |
|
On the first page of this mystery set in 1920's India, a scrap of paper identifies the person a desperate character seeks:
MRS KAVERI MURTHY, Mathematician and Lady Detective.
The rest of the novel... (more) |
|
|
A Beautiful Mind (2001) |
|
| Sylvia Nasar / Akiva Goldsman |
|
Although the book A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. is not fictional, Ron Howard's film (released December 2001) most certainly is. (I say this not as a complaint, but just to justify... (more) |
|
|
The Bed and the Bachelor (2011) |
|
| Tracy Anne Warren |
|
Although it involves cryptography and the Napoleonic wars, this novel is really more of a romance than it is historical fiction or espionage.
Sebastianne Dumont is the daughter of a French mathematician... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Beyond the Limit: The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya (2002) |
|
| Joan Spicci |
|
This book is a novelized account of the life of
Sofia Kovalevskaya (aka Sonia Kovalevskey and infinitely1 many alternative
spellings), famous today as the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in
mathematics.... (more) |
|
|
The Blue Door (2006) |
|
| Tanya Barfield |
|
A successful African-American mathematics professor who has tried to ignore racism and its implications for his life is visited by the memories of three dead relatives during a sleepless night in this... (more) |
|
|
The Body Outside the Kremlin (2020) |
|
| James L. May |
|
This novel is a combination of historical fiction and a murder mystery, with literary ambitions. The narrator is a former math student who is sent to an island prison in the early days of the USSR. There... (more) |
|
|
The Bones of Time (1996) |
|
| Kathleen Ann Goonan |
|
A young 21st century mathematician named Cen (short for Century) Kalakaua falls in love with a 19th century Hawaiian princess when they meet through an unusual temporal phenomenon. He becomes obsessed... (more) |
|
|
The Brady Kids (Episode: It's All Greek to Me) (1972) |
|
| Marc Richards (screenwriter) / Marc Richards (director) |
|
I had completely forgotten that there was a cartoon about the Brady Bunch until I ran across this while searching for mathematical fiction. But, it looks so familiar (the pet pandas, the cheesy animation,... (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) |
|
|
The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel (2018) |
|
| Mary Robinette Kowal |
|
This novel, which is the first in a series of prequels by the author for her Hugo Award-winning story "The Lady Astronaut of Mars", is a sort of alternate history version of Hidden Figures.
In the world... (more) |
|
|
Calculus (Newton's Whores) (2004) |
|
| Carl Djerassi |
|
The credit for the invention of calculus has long been contested, being claimed by both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. A committee established by the Royal Society in 1712 concluded that Newton was... (more) |
|
|
The Cambridge Quintet (1999) |
|
| John L. Casti |
|
A group of famous historical figures, including Wittegenstein,
Schrödinger, J.B.S. Haldane, and Alan Turing meet at the home of
C.P. Snow to discuss the question of whether machines can think.
John... (more) |
|
|
Cap and Gown (2011) |
|
| Eric Flint |
|
Richard Leamington has an impact on mathematics at Cambridge University in the 17th Century despite his multiple sclerosis. Although Leamington himself is a fictional character, many of the other characters... (more) |
|
|
The Capacity for Infinite Happiness (2015) |
|
| Alexis von Konigslow |
|
A math grad student trying to start her thesis on graph theory discovers some of her family's secrets when visiting their resort in Canada.
Graph theory involves the study of vertices (points or dots)... (more) |
|
|
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (1955) |
|
| Jean Lee Latham |
|
The life of early American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch, famous for his work on techniques of navigation, is fictionalized in this novel for young adults. Although the mathematical details are not... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel (2007) |
|
| Gaurav Suri / Hartosh Singh Bal |
|
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) |
|
|
The Chosen (1967) |
|
| Chaim Potok |
|
In Chaim Potok's classic novel about two Jewish teenagers growing up in New York City at the end of World War II, one of the two boys expresses an interest in symbolic logic:
'What kind of mathematics... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Colonel Lágrimas (2016) |
|
| Carlos Fonseca Suárez |
|
This novel is loosely based on the life of Alexander Grothendieck and is "creatively" constructed, like the writings of the Oulipo group or Borges. The Costa Rican/Puerto Rican author focuses much of his attention on Latin America and war, but mathematics itself and eccentricities (Grothendieck was eccentric!) also are major themes. The English version was translated by Megan McDowell.
(more) |
|
|
The Company of Strangers (2001) |
|
| Robert Wilson |
|
A bittersweet romance/thriller about a young woman mathematician in
Portugal spying for the British during World War II. There is a lot of
interesting stuff in this novel if you're looking at the romance... (more) |
|
|
Conceiving Ada (1997) |
|
| Lynn Hershman-Leeson
|
|
Bizarre, low-budget film in which a female computer programmer from the 20th century accesses the memories of Ada Lovelace, the 19th century mathematician and daughter of the poet Lord Byron. The film... (more) |
|
|
Confusions of Young Torless (1906) |
|
| Robert Musil |
|
A semi-autobiographical novel set in a military
academy in a desolate corner of the Austro-Hungarian empire, is the
story of the intellectual awakening of an intelligent adolescent, and
contains several... (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) |
|
|
The Countess Conspiracy (2013) |
|
| Courtney Milan |
|
This is a romance novel set in Victorian England in which the heroine is a biologist studying inheritance and the hero is her friend who publishes and presents her work in his name. The story begins... (more) |
|
|
Cryptonomicon (1998) |
|
| Neal Stephenson |
|
This "cult" novel of mathematics, computer science, espionage and
warfare follows a mathematician through World War II and his grandson
through the creation of a (less than ordinary) silicon valley start-up
company.... (more) |
|
|
The 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) |
|
|
Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton (2002) |
|
| Philip Kerr |
|
A multiple-murder mystery which outlandishly casts Newton in the role of Sherlock Holmes during his tenure as Warden at the British Royal Mint (Watson is played Christopher Ellis, nephew of mathematician... (more) |
|
|
Dead Ancients Trilogy (2008) |
|
| Peter Hobbs |
|
Pythagoras explains in first person his celebrated theorem, complete with diagrams and shaded triangles. It is a source of substantial chagrin to him because it naturally leads to the irrational numbers.... (more) |
|
|
The Death of Archimedes (1923) |
|
| Karel Capek |
|
As history usually tells the story, Archimedes is killed by a Roman
soldier who did not realize who he was. In this version, however, the
centurion is well aware of who he is speaking with. While he... (more) |
|
|
Decoded (2002) |
|
| Mai Jia |
|
This novel tells the story of Rong Jinzhen, a mathematical genius who becomes a cryptographer in Mao's secret intelligence agency.
The author, who is a well-known award-winning author in China, supposedly... (more) |
|
|
Der Tag ohne Abend (The Day without Evening) (1925) |
|
| Leo Perutz |
|
Der Tag ohne Abend/The Day without Evening is a short story which
alludes to the life of Evariste Galois and to Augustine's theology.
Perutz' protagonist is called Georges Durval, he lives at the
beginning... (more) |
|
|
The Difference Engine (1991) |
|
| William Gibson / Bruce Sterling |
|
Two of the innovators of the cyberpunk novel -- famous for showing how messed up the future will be because of technology -- turn everything around and show us instead how great the past would have been... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
The Divine Proportions of Luca Pacioli (2019) |
|
| W.A.W. Parker |
|
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) |
|
|
Doctor Who: The Turing Test (2000) |
|
| Paul Leonard |
|
Mathematician Alan Turing appears as a primary character in this unusual Doctor Who novel, and narrates the first third of it. (The other two thirds are narrated by authors Graham Greene and Joseph Heller... (more) |
|
|
Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959) |
|
| Hamilton Luske (director) |
|
Disney's Donald Duck takes an adventure to a land where mathematics
"comes alive". (Animated short.)
I used this video in my 6th grade
classroom. The kids enjoyed watching
... (more) |
|
|
Duke with Benefits (Studies in Scandal) (2017) |
|
| Manda Collins |
|
A romance novel with a strong female lead, Lady Daphne Forsyth, who is a mathematician with some stereotypical anti-social traits. She has been set the task of solving an old mystery by breaking a cipher. However, since this is a romance novel, she is unsurprisingly distracted by a certain hunky guy, the "duke" of the title, whose family owns the library containing the cipher.
(more) |
|
|
D'Alembert's Principle: A Novel in Three Panels (2000) |
|
| Andrew Crumey |
|
A fictionalized presentation of the life (and love) of Jean le Rond
D'Alembert (1717-1783), best known -- to me at least -- as the first
to study and solve the famous linear wave equation u_xx + c u_tt = 0.
See the online
bookreview at at MAA Online. (more) |
|
|
Eifelheim (2006) |
|
| Michael Flynn |
|
In this award winning science fiction novel, Tom and Sharon have a lot in common. They share an apartment, both use sophisticated mathematics in their research, and both become completely obsessed with... (more) |
|
|
The Eight (1989) |
|
| Katherine Neville |
|
This book really is AMAZING. I have read it numerous times and it always gets better. Math plays an important part in this story and the connections made in the plot are fascinating. This book is an... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Emilie (2010) |
|
| Kaija Saariaho (composer)/Amin Maalouf (libretto) |
|
In this opera, a single performer portrays the final days in the life of Émilie du Châtelet, whose promising career as a mathematical physicist in the 18th century was tragically cut short at the age of 42. Émilie du Châtelet's story is also told in two recent plays: see Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight and Legacy of Light . (more) |
|
|
|
|
Emmy Noether: The Mother of Modern Algebra (2008) |
|
| Margaret B.W. Tent |
|
A semi-fictional biography of Emmy Noether written for young adults.
The book has received positive reviews from many mathematicians who hope (as, one supposes, does the author) that young readers will... (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) |
|
|
Enchantress of Numbers: A Novel of Ada Lovelace (2017) |
|
| Jennifer Chiaverini |
|
This voluminous (448 page) work of historical fiction is told in first person from the perspective of Ada Byron King (Lady Lovelace) herself. Nevertheless, as the author can count on the reader to have... (more) |
|
|
Enigma (1995) |
|
| Robert Harris / Tom Stoppard |
|
In this this espionage story set in England's Bletchley Park at the height of the Second World War, Tom Jericho is a clever mathematician at the famous code breaking facility who -- either despite or because... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Eternal (2021) |
|
| Lisa Scottoline |
|
While living under the fascist regime of Mussolini in pre-war Rome, a Jewish prodigy attends university mathematics classes taught by Levi-Civita and forms one vertex of a "love triangle". The romance and the impact of anti-semitism on academia receive equal attention in this serious work of historical fiction from an author better known for light fare. (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
|
|
The Fall of Man In Wilmslow (2009) |
|
| David Lagercrantz |
|
Before he gained fame in the US as the Swedish author taking over the mystery series featuring the fictional heroine Lisbeth Sander, David Lagercrantz wrote this novel about the death of mathematician... (more) |
|
|
Fermat's Legacy (1992) |
|
| Ian Randal Strock |
|
A funny little story about the slightly malicious reason why Fermat wrote his famous note about his Last Conjecture in the margin of a book. Should be taken as just a chuckle-worthy piece rather... (more) |
|
|
Fermat's Last Tango (2000) |
|
| Joanne Sydney Lessner / Joshua Rosenblum |
|
Fermat's Last Tango is an intelligently written, hilarious fantasia
based on Andrew Wiles' 1993 proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The main plot consists of a love triangle between Daniel
Keane... (more) |
|
|
The Fibonacci Confessions (2010) |
|
| Graham Wade |
|
A historical novel telling the life story of Leonardo Pisano, perhaps the most famous European mathematician of the Middle Ages, better known today as Fibonacci.
We know very little of the historical... (more) |
|
|
The First Circle (1968) |
|
| Alexandr Solzhenitsyn |
|
Solzhenitsyn had been a math major until Hitler and Stalin came up
with a different career path for him, and TFC is based on his own
brief stay in the luxury side of the Gulag, which he claims saved
his... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (2009) |
|
| Ki Longfellow |
|
Another novel about the historical figure Hypatia of Alexandria whose murder by Christian zealots as the Ancient Greek culture faded away makes her a good subject for authors with certain political and... (more) |
|
|
Flowers Stained with Moonlight (2005) |
|
| 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) |
|
|
|
|
La formule de Stokes, roman (2016) |
|
| 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) |
|
|
The Four Colors of Summer (2011) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
Multi-generational love stories are interwoven with the history of the Four Color Theorem, including the controversies surrounding its computer-assisted proof.
This novel was published in Greek and... (more) |
|
|
The Fourth Quadrant (2011) |
|
| Dorothy Lumley |
|
The story has some elements of mathematics built in. A ransom note coded into a ciphered message broken up on paper in 4 quadrants, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, references to the Difference Engine.... (more) |
|
|
The French Mathematician (1998) |
|
| Tom Petsinis |
|
A fictionalized account (in first person) of the life and untimely
death of Evariste Galois, originator of the mathematical subject now
known as group theory.
This is a story about a mathematician,... (more) |
|
|
Freud's Megalomania: A Novel (2001) |
|
| Israel Rosenfield |
|
This is an intriguing piece of work, mixing fact
with fiction and different styles (from the scientific essay to
the diary), probably best understood as an ironic look upon the
"Freud wars".... (more) |
|
|
Frobenius: A Sesquilogue (1996) |
|
| Lee Rudolph |
|
A fictionalized account of the life of Hamilton as remembered by
Frobenius (in verse). (A slightly different version was published in
the Mathematical Intelligencer.)
(more) |
|
|
The Future Engine (1995) |
|
| Byron Tetrick |
|
Charles Babbage's son calls on Sherlock Holmes to investigate the
theft of the Analytic Engine from its warehouse. The son gives a
description of its importance to mathematical calculations. But
it's his mention of the role of the binomial theorem in its working
that arouses Holmes's interest.
Published in Mike Resnick and M H Greenberg (eds) SHERLOCK HOLMES IN ORBIT.
(more) |
|
|
Galileo (1938) |
|
| Bertolt Brecht |
|
Of course, Brecht's biographical play takes more of a political than a mathematical view of the life of the famous astronomer/mathematician. Note that Joseph Losey, who directed the first American production... (more) |
|
|
|
|
Ghost Days (2013) |
|
| Ken Liu |
|
This short story begins with a very short computer program that computes the Fibonacci numbers which a young student is learning in school. The teacher is one of the human crew of a space ship and the... (more) |
|
|
The Girl in the Painting (2020) |
|
| Tea Cooper |
|
Jane Piper and Elizabeth Quinn are both interested in mathematics in this historical fiction novel which bounces back and forth between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Quinn arrives... (more) |
|
|
Die Gleichung des Lebens [The Equation of Life] (2017) |
|
| Norman Ohler |
|
This German novel is based on the true story of Leonhard Euler being assigned by Frederick the Great to supervise the draining of the Oderbruch marshlands near Berlin. From reviews I have read, I know... (more) |
|
|
|
|
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) |
|
|
The Hidden Girl (2017) |
|
| Ken Liu |
|
The daughter of a general during the Tang Dynasty is kidnapped by an assassin who can travel into higher dimensions. She is trained to also be an assassin, but cleverly plans her own escape.
Among... (more) |
|
|
A Higher Geometry (2006) |
|
| Sharelle Byars Moranville |
|
A teenage girl in the 1950's pursues her dream of becoming a mathematician in the American midwest over a background of sexism, romance and Cold War politics. This fictional account mirrors some of the... (more) |
|
|
A Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon (1983) |
|
| Lennart Hjulström |
|
A Swedish film about the life of Sonia Kovalevsky. The title refers,
apparently, to a site on the moon which was actually named in her
honor. The film tends to avoid the mathematics (for example, melodramatic... (more) |
|
|
Hinton (2020) |
|
| Mark Blacklock |
|
Charles Howard Hinton was a controversial mathematician working in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Howard Hinton, as he was known, studied and wrote about "the fourth dimension" and is best known... (more) |
|
|
Hypatia or The Divine Algebra (2000) |
|
| Mac Wellman |
|
Artistically produced off-Broadway play about the famous female
mathematician who was tortured to death by Christian monks in the 5th
Century. In Wellman's unusual telling, however, Hypatia ends up... (more) |
|
|
Hypatia's Math: A Play (2016) |
|
| Daniel S. Helman |
|
This play about the life of the ancient Greek mathematician Hypatia features music, dance, and the ghost of Hypatia herself. It was first performed in 2016 at the Flagstaff Arts & Leadership Academy in... (more) |
|
|
Hypatia: New Foes with an Old Face (1852) |
|
| Charles Kingsley |
|
A fictionalized account of the life and murder of the ancient Greek mathematician Hypatia. This
book, written in 1852 by Reverend Kingsley, focuses more on the
religious implications (especially the... (more) |
|
|
The Imitation Game (2014) |
|
| Morten Tyldum (director) / Graham Moore (screenplay) |
|
This film about Alan Turing and his role in breaking the Nazi enigma code has been a critical and financial success. It has won numerous awards and brought huge crowds of people to see a movie about a... (more) |
|
|
In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1939) |
|
| George Bernard Shaw |
|
Considered by many to be Shaw's worst play, this late example of his
witty writing may be of special interest to visitors to this site. It
takes place at the home of Sir Isaac Newton where he is joined... (more) |
|
|
In The Country of the Blind (1990) |
|
| Michael Flynn |
|
Sarah Beaumont escaped from the modern American ghetto to become a successful journalist, programmer and real estate investor. However, while investigating an idea for developing her latest real estate... (more) |
|
|
The Indian Clerk (2007) |
|
| David Leavitt |
|
Acclaimed author, Leavitt, presents a fictionalized version of one of the most famous "human interest stories" in mathematical history: the short life and career of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Focusing largely... (more) |
|
|
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) |
|
| James Mangold / Jez Butterworth/John-Henry Butterworth/David Koepp |
|
I finally saw this final installment of the Indiana Jones movies and was surprised that there was a mathematical aspect to it. In hindsight, I realize that the reason I did not hear about it is that it... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
The Ingenious Mr. Spinola (1924) |
|
| Ernest Bramah |
|
Max Carrados is a blind amateur detective genius, quite popular in the early 20th century, but mostly forgotten since then. (Such is also the fate of E.B.'s Kai Lung fantasy stories.)
... (more) |
|
|
An Instance of the Fingerpost (1999) |
|
| Iain Pears |
|
A murder mystery set in Oxford in the 1660's. Mathematician John
Wallis plays a major role as a character in the book (and Newton a
small role). See the review at MAA
online.
A very fine piece... (more) |
|
|
Instantiation (2019) |
|
| 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) |
|
|
The Ishango Bone (2012) |
|
| 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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Kepler: A Novel (1981) |
|
| John Banville |
|
Johannes Kepler, the most famous Rennaissance court mathematician,
is remembered today for his successes, especially his explicit
description of planetary orbits. However, he also had some rather
strange... (more) |
|
|
The Kingdom of Ohio (2009) |
|
| Matthew Flaming |
|
Cheri-Anne Toledo, the daughter of the King of Ohio, uses her mathematical skills (and the assistance of Nikola Tesla) to build a device that is supposed to be able transport people instantaneously from... (more) |
|
|
Küplerin Savasi (2021) |
|
| 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) |
|
|
Lady Claire is All That (2016) |
|
| Maya Rodale |
|
Claire Cavendish is a rare item in 19th century England, a woman whose primary interests lie within mathematics. Rather than making her an object of desire, however, her insistence on talking about maths... (more) |
|
|
The Lady's Code (2006) |
|
| Samantha Saxon |
|
The third in a series of romance novels about intelligent, confident women, The Lady's Code features Lady Juliet Pervell, who has ruined her reputation in social circles but earned an honorary degree in... (more) |
|
|
The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics (2019) |
|
| Olivia Waite |
|
Lucy Muchelny is responsible for the mathematical aspects of her father's famous publications in astronomy, but as this is the 19th century she receives no credit for that contribution. Desperate for... (more) |
|
|
Le larmes de saint Laurent (Wonder) (2010) |
|
| Dominique Fortier |
|
The three separate stories that comprise this book are tied together by common themes of romance, death and volcanism. It is because of the second story, entitled "Harmony of the Spheres", that I am including... (more) |
|
|
Leap (2004) |
|
| Lauren Gunderson |
|
This play explores the inspiration for Isaac Newton's amazing discoveries in 1664, personifying it in the form of two young girls whose playful interaction leads to the results we remember Newton for today.... (more) |
|
|
Legacy of Light (2009) |
|
| Karen Zacarías |
|
Two tales of discovery and pregnancy are told in this play. An astrophysicist at the Newton Institute whose team has discovered evidence of a planet in formation feels that she is too old to be pregnant... (more) |
|
|
Let Newton Be! (2011) |
|
| Craig Baxter |
|
The three actors in this play portray Isaac Newton at three different stages of his life, as well as occasionally representing other people. Interestingly, the three Newton's interact with each other,... (more) |
|
|
The Library Paradox (2006) |
|
| Catherine Shaw |
|
Vanessa Duncan returns as the skilled amateur detective of Victorian England in this third mystery novel by "Catherine Shaw". (See The Three-Body Problem and Flowers Stained with Moonlight for the earlier... (more) |
|
|
Life and Fate (1959) |
|
| Vasily Grossman |
|
A Russian nuclear physicist flirts with the wife of his mathematician colleague and makes an important mathematical discovery, all during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
I had not heard of this... (more) |
|
|
Life in a Mirror (2003) |
|
| Daniel Ryan |
|
This e-book not only contains many explicit references to mathematics, but it also claims to follow the outline of a mathematical text!
Set in 18th century Brittany, the story is ostensibly about royalty... (more) |
|
|
The Limit (2019) |
|
| Freya Smith / Jack Williams |
|
This pop-rock musical about the life of mathematician Sophie Germain was performed in March 2019 at the VAULT festival in London.
The playwrights were supposedly looking for a historical female character... (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) |
|
|
The Loom of God: Mathematical Tapestries at the Edge of Time (1997) |
|
| Clifford Pickover |
|
A group of time travelers journey back to the time of Pythagoras in an effort to see the origins of mystical mathematics. The journey continues as they explore numerous links between mathematics, nature and mysticism. Concepts featured: pentagonal numbers, perfect numbers, oblong numbers, the golden ratio, and fractals. Religious implications are also discussed.
(more) |
|
|
Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (2005) |
|
| John Crowley |
|
This book is made up of notes and e-mail messages from a feminist historian interspersed with chapters from a previously unknown novel by Lord Byron which she has discovered while researching his daughter,... (more) |
|
|
|
|
The Lost Books of the Odyssey (2008) |
|
| Zachary Mason |
|
The introduction to this novel is a work of pseudo-scholarship, explaining how the chapters to follow were decoded by an NSA cryptographer with the help of the author. The intro contains references to... (more) |
|
|
Lovesong of the Electric Bear (2005) |
|
| Snoo Wilson (playwright) |
|
This play about Alan Turing, told from the point of view of Porgy, his teddy bear, was produced as part of the Summer 2005 season at the Potomac Theater Project in Maryland. Turing certainly had both... (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) |
|
|
The Man Who Dammed the Yangtze: A Mathematical Novel (2011) |
|
| Alex Kuo |
|
A story of two number theorists at the opposite ends of the world having similar experiences of strife and disillusionment at times of great turmoil. Ge is a female mathematician teaching in schools in... (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 MANIAC (2023) |
|
| Benjamin Labatut |
|
The life of John von Neumann is the main focus of this book which (like the author's other work in this database) could easily be mistaken for a non-fictional history book. The middle portion of the book... (more) |
|
|
A Map for the Missing (2022) |
|
| Belinda Huijuan Tang |
|
Tang Yitian, a Chinese-American math professor who grew up in China shortly after the revolution, undertakes a journey to find his estranged father.
Anti-intellectualism always made it hard for Yitian... (more) |
|
|
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017) |
|
| Amy Sherman-Palladino / Daniel Palladino |
|
The main plot of this show -- which concerns the transformation of Midge Maisel from a Jewish housewife in the 1950s into a successful and edgy standup comic -- has nothing to do with mathematics. So,... (more) |
|
|
El matemático del Rey (2002) |
|
| Juan Carlos Arce |
|
It is a novel about a period in the lives of Juan Lezuza and his friend Luis Obelar during the first years of the rule of Phillip IV of Spain. Juan Lezuza is appointed teacher of the King, but it is... (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) |
|
|
|
|
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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Measuring the World (2006) |
|
| Daniel Kehlmann |
|
Two famous Germans of the 19th Century, mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and explorer/geologist Alexander von Humboldt, are irreverently presented in this novel which topped the sales charts in Germany... (more) |
|
|
Mersenne's Mistake (2008) |
|
| Jason Earls |
|
This is a nice piece of mathematical fiction in which the mathematician/monk Marin Mersenne encounters a demon with amazing mathematical skills. Like the other stories by Earls, this seems to be designed to showcase the interesting numbers which he has found using computer algebra tools.
(more) |
|
|
Miscalculations (2000) |
|
| Elizabeth Mansfield |
|
This romance novel features female "math whiz",
hired to help an attractive millionaire handle his wealth. Of course, they fall in love.
If you have read this book and can correct/add to the description above,
please write to me at kasmana@cofc.edu.
(more) |
|
|
Miss Havilland (2020) |
|
| Gay Daly |
|
Evelyn Havilland, who left her studies in mathematics at Stanford University in 1917 to aid with the war effort, must decide between marrying a linguistics professor she met when they were both working... (more) |
|
|
Mr. Churchill's Secretary (2012) |
|
| Susan Elia MacNeal |
|
After graduating with a degree in mathematics from Wellesley, Maggie Hope plans to go on to graduate studies at MIT, but her plans change unexpectedly when a letter from England gets her instead looking... (more) |
|
|
Mrs. Einstein (1998) |
|
| Anna McGrail |
|
It's a wonderful novel that invents a history for Einstein's illegitimate daughter, about whom little is known. In the novel, she's a mathematician who becomes obsessed with her father's refusal to acknowledge... (more) |
|
|
Murder and Mendelssohn (Phryne Fisher Mystery) (2014) |
|
| Kerry Greenwood |
|
As a fan of the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries TV Series, I was pleased to see that the 20th novel in the series that inspired it features a mathematician, giving me an excuse to read it.
Phryne Fisher... (more) |
|
|
Murder at Queen's Landing (2021) |
|
| Andrea Penrose |
|
This is the fourth in a series of books in which romance sparks between Wrexford (a chemist) and Sloan (an artist) while they solve mysteries in Regency-era England. In this one, the mystery involves... (more) |
|
|
Murder in the Great Church (2020) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
Essentially all I know about this book is that it is a murder mystery which takes place in 6th century Constantinople and that the primary suspect is a young mathematician. Unfortunately, I do not read... (more) |
|
|
Murmur (2019) |
|
| Will Eaves |
|
A novel about a character whose story is clearly closely modeled on the life of Alan Turing. Like Turing, Alec Pryor is a British mathematician whose worldview is shaped by a childhood romance with a... (more) |
|
|
The Music of the Spheres (2001) |
|
| Elizabeth Redfern |
|
A highly praised (a la Caleb Carr) historical thriller set in Europe in
1795, involving lots of astronomy. This includes Laplace musing over his
theorem that gravitational perturbations are bounded, and his wondering
if a similar theorem applies to history.
(more) |
|
|
The Name of the Rose (1980) |
|
| Umberto Eco |
|
A mystery novel which takes place in a 14th Century monastery by the brilliant Italian author, Umberto Eco. This book only has a small amount of math in it, but I frequently receive recommendations to... (more) |
|
|
The Nesting Dolls (2020) |
|
| Alina Adams |
|
A novel in three-parts focusing on three women in the same family over the course of a century. It is the middle story, concerning Natasha Crystal, that is most strongly connected to mathematics. Natasha... (more) |
|
|
Newton's Gift (1979) |
|
| Paul J. Nahin |
|
Time traveller Wallace John Steinhope believes that he will be able to help
his hero, Isaac Newton, avoid the tedium of computation by bringing him an electronic
calculator that can do simple arithmetic.... (more) |
|
|
Newton's Hooke (2004) |
|
| David Pinner |
|
A play about Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke which presents "the dark side" of Newton. Emphasis is put on his egotism (not only does he think that he is incomparably brilliant, but he also seems to think... (more) |
|
|
The Number of Love (The Codebreakers) (2019) |
|
| Roseanna M. White |
|
This novel may fall into an unlikely combination of categories (it is a wartime religious historical romance spy story that is also mathematical), but its main character is a familiar stereotype: Margot... (more) |
|
|
Number Stories of Long Ago (1919) |
|
| David Eugene Smith |
|
A really beautiful, well-crafted book which presents a very wide variety of aspects of the history of number theory through fictional stories from Mesopotamia, Rome, Egypt, China, and many other places,... (more) |
|
|
One Hundred Twenty-One Days (2014) |
|
| Michèle Audin (Author) / Christiana Hills (Translator) |
|
This tragic "novel" by mathematician and Oulipo member Michèle Audin follows the lives of three fictional mathematicians (Christian Mortsauf, Robert Gorenstein and Andre Silberberg) through the first... (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 Ore Miner's Wife (2003) |
|
| Karl Iagnemma |
|
A miner who spends his spare time secretly working on geometry problems arouses the suspicions of his God fearing wife when she comes upon his cryptic writings and follows him to a meeting with a visiting... (more) |
|
|
The Pacific Mystery (2006) |
|
| Stephen Baxter |
|
This starts as an alternate history short story, in which Lord Halifax became Prime Minister of England in 1940 and reaches an accommodation with Germany; Germany holds sway over Europe and Russia, Japan... (more) |
|
|
Papos (2007) |
|
| Alex Rose |
|
A short piece which mixes up historical facts/pseudo-facts from Greek history with rich imagination to discuss the discovery of irrational numbers (Pythagoras, Hippasus), the vanishing point in perspective... (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) |
|
|
The Peculiarities (2021) |
|
| David Liss |
|
Thomas Thresher, the youngest descendant of the founder of Thresher's Bank in London, has problems. For one thing, Walter Thresher, the current bank director, has trapped him in a dead-end job as a bank... (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) |
|
|
A Perfect Equation (The Secret Scientists of London) (2022) |
|
| Elizabeth Everett |
|
Miss Letitia Fenley wishes to compete for the prestigious Rosewood Prize for Mathematics. Unfortunately, she is distracted from her research by her role in a secret society of female scientists in Victorian... (more) |
|
|
Petersburg (1913) |
|
| Andrei Bely |
|
In this modernist Russian novel, the revolutionary Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov is charged with the task of killing a Tsarist official ... his own father. In addition to mathematical terminology that... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Princess Elizabeth's Spy: A Maggie Hope Mystery (2012) |
|
| Susan Elia MacNeal |
|
Maggie Hope is assigned to stay with the royal family. As we know from her first appearance in Mr. Churchill's Secretary, Maggie has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Wellesley and was about... (more) |
|
|
Professor and Colonel (1987) |
|
| Ruth Berman |
|
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) |
|
|
Professor Conundrum Mysteries! (2008) |
|
| Bill Streifer |
|
My book, Professor Conundrum Mysteries!...combines math education (non-fiction) and historical fiction.
The book consists of five stories that take place during important events in 20th century U.S.... (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 the Mathemagician (2010) |
|
| Karim El Koussa |
|
This novel concerns the ancient Greek mathematician to whom we generally attribute the theorem relating the lengths of the sides of a right triangle. However, it focuses much more on his religious, mystical,... (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) |
|
|
The Queen's Gambit (2020) |
|
| Scott Frank (writer&director) /Allan Scott (writer) /Walter Tevis (writer) |
|
This popular TV mini-series about the personal trials of a chess prodigy is based on a novel. Interestingly, as I learned from Lauren Tubbs, a tiny bit of math was added for the screen adaptation:
One... (more) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Quod Erat Demonstrandum (2013) |
|
| Andrei Gruzsniczki (Director and Screenwriter) |
|
A mathematician is persecuted for failing to join the communist party in this film that starkly portrays life in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu.
In the film, Sorin Parvu has proved an important... (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) |
|
|
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (1967) |
|
| Tom Stoppard |
|
This brilliant, weird play, retelling the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet
from the point of view of two "throw away" characters, unfortunately has
very little mathematics in it. However, every few days... (more) |
|
|
Roten av minus én [The Square Root of Minus One] (2006) |
|
| Atle Næss |
|
There are three different levels of reality in this novel: On the one hand it is the story of Terje Huuse, a Norwegian mathematician undergoing a midlife crisis. That part of the story is presented through... (more) |
|
|
The Sabre Squadron (1966) |
|
| Simon Raven |
|
Daniel Mond, a British PhD candidate in mathematics, finds himself in mortal danger after traveling to Göttingen in the 1950s to analyze papers by the deceased German mathematician Dortmund.
I had... (more) |
|
|
The Sand-Reckoner (2000) |
|
| Gillian Bradshaw |
|
In this historical novel whose title is copied from one Archimedes' own works, the famous Greek mathematician is your typical math nerd, always
so wrapped up in his computations that he is barely aware... (more) |
|
|
A Season of Flirtation (2023) |
|
| Julia Justiss |
|
Lady Laura Pomeroy's interest in mathematics makes her an unsuitable romantic interest in the 19th century:
Few gentlemen, himself included, could view as a prime matrimonial candidate a female who... (more) |
|
|
Sebastian (1968) |
|
| David Greene (director) |
|
A film about a British mathematician trying to break the German codes during World War II. (So, add this to the growing list of works of mathematical fiction inspired by Alan Turing!) I must admit that I have not yet seen the film, but you've got to love its tagline:
We can't tell you what he does (it's an international secret) but he does it with 100 girls... and does it the best!
(more) |
|
|
Sekret Enigmy (1979) |
|
| Roman Wionczek
|
|
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) |
|
|
A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (1991) |
|
| Kim Stanley Robinson |
|
This work of speculative fiction is not a traditional work of fiction with a plot and characters, but reads more like an essay about the chaotic nature of reality which includes some alternative histories... (more) |
|
|
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974) |
|
| Nicholas Meyer |
|
Meyer presents an alternative view of Sherlock Holmes in this surprising novel: that of a deluded drug addict. In particular, and of interest to those who visit this Website, we learn that Professor Moriarty is only a kindly mathematician who once tutored Holmes in mathematics. The idea that he is a criminal mastermind (as we learn in Conan Doyle's stories) is just part of Holmes' paranoia.
(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) |
|
|
Shakespeare Predicted it All (2003) |
|
| Dietmar Dath |
|
An artistically composed piece about Georg Cantor, inventor of the theory of transfinite cardinals, in the form of a dialogue between the characters "1" and "2", both of whom are either Cantor or Hamlet.... (more) |
|
|
Sharper than a Sword (1983) |
|
| Alexander Petrovich Kazantsev |
|
The famous Soviet science fiction author Kazantsev wrote this fantasy adventure featuring Pierre de Fermat. as the primary protagonist.
As far as I know, the book is out of print and available only... (more) |
|
|
The Shiloh Project (1993) |
|
| David R. Beaucage |
|
This is a Christian science fiction novel with mathematical undertones written by an author with a doctorate in mathematics. In it, a Jewish math teacher falsely accused of sexually abusing a student... (more) |
|
|
Shooting the Sun (2004) |
|
| Max Byrd |
|
Historical mathematicians Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage play supporting roles in this novel about an expedition into uncharted Indian territory to capture the first photograph of a solar eclipse at... (more) |
|
|
Singer Distance (2022) |
|
| Ethan Chatagnier |
|
At the beginning of this novel, MIT math grad student Crystal Singer and a group of her friends are on a road trip to Arizona where they plan to carve a giant message to the inhabitants of Mars. Singer... (more) |
|
|
The Smithsonian Institution (1998) |
|
| Gore Vidal |
|
In the year 1939, a 13 year old orphan known only as "T." is recruited into a secret project to build a nuclear weapon
after he is recognized by his algebra teacher as a math genius. From that description,... (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) |
|
|
Spherical Mirrors, plane murders (2017) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
Essentially all I know about this book is that it is a murder mystery which combines the conquest of Cyprus by Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades with a puzzle of optics posed in Ibn al-Haytham's... (more) |
|
|
The Square Root of Pythagoras (1999) |
|
| Paul Di Filippo/Rudy Rucker |
|
Pythagoras has been granted the magical power of five numbers.
Along the way he discusses his theorem, the five Platonic solids,
and his general philosophy about numbers and the universe. But
he... (more) |
|
|
The Stargazers (1986) |
|
| Barbara Susan Lefever |
|
An historical novel based on Mason and Dixon. (Includes references!) It was self-published in a first printing of 700, and a second printing of 200. The author is/was a member of the Pennsylvania Society... (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) |
|
|
Still She Haunts Me (2001) |
|
| Katie Roiphe |
|
A novel about the life of Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). I have not
read it, and it most certainly focuses more on his affections for Alice than on
his mathematics, but I suppose there must be... (more) |
|
|
The Story of Yung Chang (1900) |
|
| Ernest Bramah (Ernest Bramah Smith) |
|
Before the invention of multiplication tables, a Chinese idol merchant must
sell his wares individually, even if someone wishes to purchase a large
amount, since he has no way to determine how much money... (more) |
|
|
A Study in Seduction (2012) |
|
| Nina Rowan |
|
From the back cover: "A heart divided...a passion multiplied...a love unequalled."
Although you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, I could guess from the image of a shirtless man with no chest hair... (more) |
|
|
A Suitable Boy (1993) |
|
| Vikram Seth |
|
Sometimes referred to as the longest published English novel, this book about a mother's search for a husband for her daughter in post-colonial India has enough pages to devote a few to mathematics. And,... (more) |
|
|
The Sum of All Kisses (2013) |
|
| Julia Quinn |
|
Lady Sarah Pleinsworth and a mathematician who was crippled in a duel are forced to spend time together. Since they despise each other at the outset, we know from the typical plot arc of the romance novel... (more) |
|
|
Summer Solstice (1985) |
|
| Charles Leonard Harness |
|
I did enjoy reading this short story (nominated for a Nebula award in 1985)
in which the famous Greek mathematician Eratosthenes determines the Earth's
circumference and meets a shipwrecked alien, but... (more) |
|
|
Symmetry and the Expatriate (2012) |
|
| Tefcros Michaelides |
|
A fictional character obsessed with symmetry is forced by horrific circumstances to travel around Europe in the early 20th century where he meets famous mathematicians, relatives of famous mathematicians,... (more) |
|
|
A Szirakuzai Óriás [A Giant of Syracuse] (1959) |
|
| Száva István |
|
This Hungarian novelization of the life of Archimedes was brought to my attention by frequent site contributor Vijay Fafat. Unfortunately, we know very little about it. It has been republished numerous times, but not translated into English AFAIK. If you have read this book and can tell us more about it (especially its mathematical contact), please write. (more) |
|
|
The Tenth Muse (2019) |
|
| Catherine Chung |
|
This wide-ranging work of historical fiction unfolds in the period from just before World War II into the 1960s, in America, Europe and Asia. In the first chapter, the narrator is already an aging mathematician... (more) |
|
|
The Three Body Problem (2004) |
|
| Catherine Shaw |
|
A cleverly titled novel that uses a historical mathematical contest
and several characters based on real mathematicians as the basis for a
murder mystery. Of special interest is the novel's presentation... (more) |
|
|
To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) |
|
| Connie Willis |
|
Travelling through time, as we all know, is a dangerous business. One small change in the past and you could mess up the future! In this science fiction novel, Willis proposes a (vaguely mathematical)... (more) |
|
|
Too Much Happiness (2009) |
|
| Alice Munro |
|
The penultimate collection of short stories from Nobel laureate Alice Munro features a title story about the final days of Sonia Kovalevskaya. The main source of tension in the story is her love affair... (more) |
|
|
Touch the Water, Touch the Wind (1972) |
|
| Amos Oz |
|
Amos Oz, the famous Israeli author and political activist, wrote this mathematical, musical and mystical novel about a Holocaust survivor who proves a terribly important theorem about "infinity" while... (more) |
|
|
The Trachtenberg Speed System (2014) |
|
| Buzz Mauro |
|
Realizing that he is likely to die there, Jakow Trachtenberg fantasizes that the method of mental computation that he has created while at a Nazi concentration camp will live on beyond him. A young guard... (more) |
|
|
Turbulence (2010) |
|
| Giles Foden |
|
A British meteorologist is stationed in Scotland during World War II not to simply run a weather station (which is his cover), but to get to know the brilliant Wallace Ryman and learn to use his mathematical... (more) |
|
|
Two Moons (2000) |
|
| Thomas Mallon |
|
A historical novel set in Washington DC of the late 19th century in which
astronomers and the Naval Observatory (aided by the "computer" Cynthia May)
deal with scientific and political matters of the... (more) |
|
|
Ultima lezione a Gottinga [Last lecture at Göttingen] (2009) |
|
| Davide Osenda |
|
This beautifully illustrated comic book presents a professor's last lecture to a (nearly) empty auditorium as the Nazi's begin to gather the city's Jews outside. It is perhaps a stretch to call this "fiction";... (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) |
|
|
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) |
|
|
Universe of Two (2020) |
|
| Stephen P. Kiernan |
|
A novel about a mathematician who works on the Manhattan Project, focusing primarily on his ethical dilemma and his romance with an organist (who narrates every other chapter). The protagonist, Charlie... (more) |
|
|
Unlocked (2012) |
|
| Courtney Milan |
|
In this novella the heroine's mother is an amateur astronomer computing the orbit of a comet. She has no recognition from professional astronomers. She is invited by her fellow upper class ladies... (more) |
|
|
V2: A Novel of World War II (2020) |
|
| Robert Harris |
|
The plot of this work of historical fiction is based on the following historical fact: A team of British WAAFs stationed in Belgium used mathematics and slide rules to try to determine the location of... (more) |
|
|
Verrechnet (2009) |
|
| Carl Djerassi/Isabella Gregor |
|
With the help of playwright/director Isabella Gregor, Djerassi updated his play Calculus (Newton's Whores). The plot still revolves around the question of priority on the invention of calculus, and especially... (more) |
|
|
Waiting for Citizen Gödel (2005) |
|
| Howard V. Hendrix |
|
Short story revolving around Godel's application for US citizenship. There is a well-known episode from Godel's life, where Einstein and Oscar Morgenstern took Godel for his citizenship oath. Godel,... (more) |
|
|
War and Peace (1869) |
|
| Lev Tolstoy |
|
Tolstoy's famous novel about...well, about war and peace (!) contains long passages explaining an analogy he makes between history and calculus. In particular, he argues that we should view history as... (more) |
|
|
The Weight of Numbers (2006) |
|
| Simon Ings |
|
This is an ambitious novel which attempts to be as overwhelming as Pynchon, to deconstruct what it means to be human like Vonnegut and to tie together bits of history like Forrest Gump. For a few readers,... (more) |
|
|
|
|
When Women Were Dragons (2022) |
|
| Kelly Barnhill |
|
In this fantasy/alternative history novel, many women literally turn into dragons in the 1950's. It is clear to the reader that the sexism of that era is responsible for that magical transformation, and... (more) |
|
|
Who Killed Professor X? (2010) |
|
| Thodoris Andriopoulos / Thanasis Gkiokas |
|
The famous mathematician Professor X (not to be confused with Charles Xavier) is found dead before his presentation to the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900, and this graphic novel puts... (more) |
|
|
Whom the gods love: The story of Evariste Galois (1948) |
|
| Leopold Infeld |
|
A fictionalized biography of the ill-fated originator of group theory written by
a collaborator of Einstein (better known today for his joint work with Max Born on electrodynamics).
“No professor... (more) |
|
|
The World as I Found It (1987) |
|
| Bruce Duffy |
|
A fictionalized "biography" of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
including a portrayal of Bertrand Russell.
"Very enjoyable, but barely scratches the surface of Wittgenstein's life,
work, and character... (more) |
|
|
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) |
|
| Kim Stanley Robinson |
|
This alternative history is based on the assumption that the Great Plague
of the 1300s that decimated Europe's population was much worse, and that
it in fact led to the extinction of almost all of... (more) |
|
|
Yesternight (2016) |
|
| Cat Winters |
|
In this eerie thriller, a school psychologist tries to help parents of a young girl they believe is the reincarnated soul of a mathematical genius who died at the age of 19.
A psychologist fresh out... (more) |
|
|
Zéro, ou les Cinq vies d'Aemer (2005) |
|
| Denis Guedj |
|
This novel traces the history of the number `zero' through the lives of five different women, living in five different eras, but all living in the same place: Mesopotamia/Iraq.
Guedj is already known... (more) |
|
