The Secret Life of Numbers: 50 Easy Pieces on How Mathematicians Work and Think (2006)
Chapter: Front Matter
Joseph Henry Press
500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
The Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academies Press, was created with the goal of making books on science, technology, and health more widely available to professionals and the public. Joseph Henry was one of the founders of the National Academy of Sciences and a leader in early American science.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences or its affiliated institutions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Szpiro, George G.
The secret life of numbers : 50 easy pieces on how mathematicians work and think / George G. Szpiro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-09658-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Mathematics—History. I. Title.
QA21.S995 2006
510—dc22
2005030601
Cover design by Michele de la Menardiere
Copyright 2006 by George G. Szpiro. All rights reserved.
Translated by Eva Burke, London
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
Whenever a socialite shows off his flair at a cocktail party by reciting a stanza from an obscure poem, he is considered well-read and full of wit. Not much ado can be made with the recitation of a mathematical formula, however. At most, one may expect a few pitying glances and the title “party’s most nerdy guest.” To the concurring nods of the cocktail crowd, most bystanders will admit that they are no good at math, never have been, and never will be.
Actually, this is quite astonishing. Imagine your lawyer telling you that he is no good at spelling, your dentist proudly proclaiming that she speaks no foreign language, and your financial advisor admitting with glee that he always mixes up Voltaire and Molière. With ample reason one would consider such people as ignorant. Not so with mathematics. Shortcomings in this intellectual discipline are met with understanding by everyone.
I have set myself the task of trying to remedy this state of affairs somewhat. The present book contains articles that I wrote on mathematics during the past three years for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung and its Sunday edition NZZ am Sonntag. It was, and is, my wish to give readers an understanding not only of the importance but also of the beauty and elegance of the subject. Anecdotes and biographical details of the oftentimes quirky actors are not neglected, but, whenever possible, I give an idea of the theories and proofs. The complexity of mathematics should neither be hidden nor overrated.
Neither this book nor, indeed, my career as a mathematics journalist evolved in a linear fashion. After studies of mathematics and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and a few career changes, I became the Jerusalem correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. My job was to report about the goings-on in the Middle East. But my initial love for mathematics never
waned, and when a conference about symmetry was to be held in Haifa, I convinced my editor to send me to this city in northern Israel in order to cover the gathering. It turned out to be one of the best assignments I ever did for the paper. (It was nearly as good as the cruise on a luxury liner down the Danube to Budapest, but that is another story.) From then on I wrote, on and off, about mathematical themes.
In March 2002 I had the opportunity to make use of my mathematical interests in a more regular fashion. The NZZ am Sonntag launched the monthly feature “George Szpiro’s little multiplication table.” I soon found out the hard way that the reception by the readers was better than expected: The incorrect birth date of a mathematician in one of the early columns led to nearly two dozen readers’ letters ranging in tone from the ironic to the angry. A year later I received a special honor when the Swiss Academy of Sciences awarded the column its Media Prize for 2003. In December 2005, at a ceremony at the Royal Society in London, I was named a finalist for the European Commissionís Descartes Prize for Science Communication.
I would like to thank my editors in Zurich—Kathrin Meier-Rust, Andreas Hirstein, Christian Speicher, and Stefan Betschon—for their patient and knowledgeable editorial work, my sister Eva Burke in London for diligently translating the articles, and Jeffrey Robbins of the Joseph Henry Press in Washington, D.C,. for turning the manuscript into what I hope has become an enjoyable book on a subject commonly thought of as dry as a bone.
George G. Szpiro
Jerusalem, Spring 2006
