The Secret Lives of Numbers

Lively, satisfying, good at explaining difficult concepts * The Sunday Times *
A delightful journey through some of the lesser known highways and byways of mathematics – Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of The Man from the Future
Modern technology is built on the work of those who pursued maths for maths’ sake. This book is a clever tribute to those brilliant, if sometimes erratic, lives – Tom Calver * The Sunday Times *
A delightful journey through some of the lesser known highways and byways of mathematics that brings to the fore many fascinating figures who have been unjustly forgotten. A treasury of lost historical tales where you can find the story of a Keralan mathematician who might have discovered calculus centuries before Newton and Leibniz or the eleventh-century Chinese origins of binary in the I Ching – Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of The Man from the Future
The history of math is typically taught from an exclusively Greco-Eurocentric perspective as a parade of great men. This significantly distorts reality. Mathematics has been invented in one form or another by every culture on Earth, and the exclusion of women and people of color from traditional narratives is particularly glaring. Kitagawa and Revell do an excellent job of broadening our view to the far more vibrant, collaborative, diverse, and interesting history … Mathematics is the most powerful tool humans ever invented, and this book is a welcome corrective to our understanding of how it came to be * Kirkus, starred review *

Dr Tomoko L. Kitagawa is a historian of mathematics at Oxford University. After a stint as a diplomat at the United Nations, she received her PhD from Princeton University. She has taught at Harvard University and has held research positions at UC Berkeley, University of Cambridge and the Max Planck Institute. A bestselling author in Japan, she was selected as one of the ‘100 most influential people in Japan’ by Nikkei Business Publishing, and has appeared on Netflix, CNN, the History Channel and the BBC.

Dr Timothy Revell is a science journalist and lapsed mathematician. He is Culture and Comment Editor at New Scientist and also currently runs their diversity internship scheme. He often appears on the BBC radio show ‘The Naked Scientists’.

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