Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life - Softcover

Wilson, Robin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141016108 ISBN 13: 9780141016108

Publisher: Penguin UK, 2009

Synopsis

Lewis Carroll's books have delighted children and adults for generations, but behind their exuberant fantasy and delightful nonsense was the mind of a brilliant mathematician. Now his forgotten achievements in the world of numbers are brought to light by acclaimed author and mathematician Robin Wilson. Here he explores the curious imagination of a man whose pioneering work at Oxford University included investigations into voting patterns and tennis seeding, who dreamt up numerical conundrums in bed at night and who filled his writings with problems, paradoxes, puzzles and teasing games of logic. Taking us into a world of mock turtles and maps, gryphons and gravity, "Lewis Carroll in Numberland" reveals the singular mind of a genius.

About this title

About the Author:

Robin Wilson is Head of the Pure Mathematics Department at the Open University and, in London, Gresham Professor of Geometry, the oldest mathematics Chair in England. He is also a Fellow in Mathematics at Keble College, Oxford. The author and editor of thirty books, including the critically acclaimed Four Colours Suffice, he is well known internationally for his expository skills and has won a number of prestigious awards for his writings.

From Publishers Weekly:

British mathematician Wilson (Four Colors Suffice) paints a charming picture of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, in this slender biography. Skipping over the most chronicled aspects of Dodgson's life with only a sharp side note deriding rumors of his pedophilia as bad history and bad psychology, Wilson focuses on Dodgson's mathematical and educational accomplishments: pamphlets and books on Euclid, an efficient way of calculating determinants, astute analysis of election methods, and systems of mnemonics and ciphers. Wilson also includes puzzles (some with unsatisfying solutions); a number of Dodgson's photographs, for which Wilson labels him one of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century; and humorous and satirical letters suggesting political postulates such as, Let it be granted, that a speaker may digress from any one point to any other point. Though Dodgson was apparently not always a brilliant teacher or writer in his field, Wilson chooses some of his best work for the examples, and any fan of Victorian mind-benders or mid-level mathematics will enjoy the Dodo's witty and eager explanations of logical puzzles and games. 100 illus. (Nov.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0141016108
• ISBN 13: 9780141016108
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 200