Books like The Secret Lives of Numbers — picked by fans

This book on nothing and zero by a professor of mathematics provides an introduction to the history and applications of my favorite number zero. It is entertaining as well as posing provocative questions folks like me ponder “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

It is a book that effortlessly blends high and complex mathematical concepts with their historical and philosophical routes. A great read for those interested in exploring the meaning of nothing.

This book was my first exposure to the practical application of many scientific principles to societal issues and their laws.

As a scientist who fully understands the limitations of certain statistical tests and chemical assays, I was shocked to see how these could be so misapplied. This book presents numerous examples of how statistics improperly conducted or interpreted can be simply wrong when they are taken out of context.

This foray into the popular literature transformed my thinking on the application of mathematical principles to everyday problems.

My exposure to the number zero over four decades teaching and doing research in mathematics, nanoscience, chemical toxicology, and food safety made me wonder why this number, quantifying nothing, was such a problem whenever it is encountered.

This easy-to-read book gives a complete history of zero from the ancients to the present, as well as illustrating some of its unique properties across numerous disciplines. It is an eye-opening journey into the fascinating properties of a truly unique number.

The author argues that the biggest questions in science and religion often involve nothingness and eternity, with the resulting clashes over zero shaping the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion.

Simply a wonderful book about such a peculiar number!

This book is the best I have read on how simple and sound properties in science can be so misapplied in the legal system.

Thresholds and tolerances defined by specific scientific principles and studies, once incorporated into laws, can have unattended consequences when applied to scenarios never anticipated by the original studies.

The book gives numerous examples of well-intentioned laws creating havoc and causing harm when misapplied to new scenarios. It is a book that often comes to mind when I read the basis of a new regulation based on data that we never generated for that purpose.

First published in 1937, this lovely book is a true classic. In two volumes Bell brings to life 30 or so mathematicians, from Archimedes to Cantor. When first reading the book many years ago I had remembered some of the names from school and college, but only as labels to theorems or equations, and I felt taken into a delightful new realm of knowledge – I could now think of Fermat, Lagrange, Gauss, and Riemann as people. And I began to want to know more about the scientists whose names I had heard in school and college. Bell’s book had sparked a lifelong interest.

Frenkel came from the Soviet Union, where discrimination against Jews made it impossible for him to get into Moscow State University. During the oral exam they sent two graduate students to question him, pick holes in his responses, and ensure he failed. He turned to an informal network of Soviet mathematicians for help.

Like him, they were denied serious employment in the field, but after the 'cold war' against the Soviet Union, Harvard invited him to take a fellowship that later turned into a permanent job. Years later, when his old tormentor from Moscow State arrives to give a talk, he confronts the man in a lecture room with first-hand evidence of allegations against the system. Faced with a victim, the Russian mathematician's denials rang hollow. 

This book reaches beyond mathematics to anyone of independent thought in an environment where it is not permitted to step out of line or,… show more.

For me, this book got the closest to the nitty-gritty of why mathematicians like me, whose job is to prove theorems, find this activity so compelling.

It’s always been the long hunt, with all the frustration as well as the occasional success, that I’ve found so addictive. Doxiadis brought out the nuances of such pursuits brilliantly – the wily Uncle Petros tells the narrator to prove a mathematical statement despite knowing it is almost surely false.

Ah, these little tricks that we mathematicians enjoy playing on unsuspecting souls (I’ve been known to do this to my students a couple of times).

It is fair to say that many people—even those who loved mathematics as students—view mathematics as having always existed. The idea that definitions and theorems that fill our school textbooks were created or discovered by human beings is something that has never crossed their mind. In fact, mathematics has a long, fascinating, and rich history, and William Dunham’s Journey Through Genius is a perfect introduction to the topic. Dunham expertly writes about the history of topics like geometry, number theory, set theory, and calculus in a way that is entertaining, understandable, and rigorous. After finishing Journey Through Genius, readers will not think about mathematics in the same way, and they will be eager to learn about the history of other mathematical topics, people, and cultures.

One way of enlivening any presentation of mathematics is by including some history of the subject, but this only really works if there is some serious scholarship behind it. I especially like Hollingdale's book, partly because of the concise writing style, and partly because of the unusually good balance between history and mathematics itself. The calculus, in all its various forms, with some aspects going right back to the Ancient Greeks, is treated especially well.

Many undergraduate mathematics books – even those aimed at new students – are dense, technical, and difficult to read at any sort of speed. This is a natural feature of books in a deductive science, but it can be very discouraging, even for dedicated students. Houston’s book covers many ideas useful at the transition to proof-based mathematics, and he has worked extensively and attentively with students at that stage. Consequently, his book maintains high mathematical integrity and has lots of useful exercises while also being an unusually friendly read.