Books December 2009
Still four
A review of Mathematicians: An Outer View of the Inner World by Mariana Cook.
Mariana Cook --> reviewed by Martin Gardner -->
Mariana Cook opens her preface to Mathematicians with these sentences: “They are not like the rest of us. They may look like the rest of us, but they are not the same.” One is reminded of how F. Scott Fitzgerald began a short story: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” To which Ernest Hemingway famously responded, “Yes, they have more money.” One is tempted to make a similar reply regarding Ms. Cook’s mathematicians—“Yes, they know more about math.”
Mathematicians is a huge beautiful book, ten inches by a foot. On the left side of each double page is a crisp autobiography by a world-famous...
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