Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality

Frenkel s winsome new memoir… is three things: a Platonic love letter to mathematics; an attempt to give the layman some idea of its most magnificent drama-in-progress; and an autobiographical account, by turns inspiring and droll, of how the author himself came to be a leading player in that drama. –New York Review of Books

Frenkel writes that math directs the flow of the universe. It s as elegant as music and as much a part of our intellectual heritage as literature. He strives to awaken our wonder by taking us on [a] tour of his research, in which he reveals a hidden world few of us encountered in school… Frenkel aims to make it understandable, even beautiful. –New York Times Book Review

Frenkel’s gusto will draw readers into his own quest, pursuing the deepest realities of mathematics as if it were a giant jigsaw puzzle, in which no one knows what the final image is going to look like. –Publisher’s Weekly

Reasoning that some of us are unwilling to engage with maths because we cannot see it, Professor Frenkel relates it tirelessly to things we can. A colourful paean to numbers. –The Guardian

If you re not a mathematician this book might make you want to become one. And if you are a mathematician you will feel better about your profession. –Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Antifragile

The words love and math aren t usually uttered in the same breath. But mathematician Edward Frenkel is on a mission to change that…[in his] book, Love and Math [in which] the tenured professor at the University of California at Berkeley argues that the boring way that math is traditionally taught in schools has led to a widespread ignorance that may have even been responsible for the recession… [the] book tells his personal story and goes on to describe his research in the Langlands program, as well as recent mathematical discoveries that aren t regularly taught in classrooms. –The Wall Street Journal

I don’t know if I’ve ever used the words love and math together, but this book changed that. In the tradition of his heroes Andre Weil and C. N. Yang, Edward Frenkel writes of the objective beauty of numbers. Like musical notes, they exist apart from the mind, daring us to fathom their depths and assemble them in arcane narratives that tell the story of us. Reading this book, one is compelled to drop everything and give math another try; to partake of the ultimate mystery. –Chris Carter, Creator of the X-Files

Part ode, part autobiography, Love and Math is an admirable attempt to lay bare the beauty of numbers for all to see. –Scientific American

Two fascinating narratives are interwoven in Love and Math, one mathematical, the other personal… Frenkel deftly takes the reader … to the far reaches of our current understanding. He seeks to lay bare the beauty of mathematics for everyone. As he writes, There is nothing in this world that is so deep and exquisite and yet so readily available to all.’ –Marcus du Sautoy, Nature

Two fascinating narratives are interwoven in Love and Math, one mathematical, the other personal… Frenkel deftly takes the reader … to the far reaches of our current understanding. He seeks to lay bare the beauty of mathematics for everyone. As he writes, There is nothing in this world that is so deep and exquisite and yet so readily available to all.’ –Marcus du Sautoy, Nature