Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession
In the tradition of Fermat's Last Theorem and Einstein's Dreams, a novel about mathematical obsession.Petros Papachristos devotes the early part of his life trying to prove one of the greatest mathematical challenges of all time: Goldbach's Conjecture, the deceptively simple claim that every even...
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In the tradition of Fermat's Last Theorem and Einstein's Dreams, a novel about mathematical obsession.Petros Papachristos devotes the early part of his life trying to prove one of the greatest mathematical challenges of all time: Goldbach's Conjecture, the deceptively simple claim that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes. Against a tableau of famous historical figures-among them G.H. Hardy, the self-taught Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, and a young Kurt Godel-Petros works furiously to prove the notoriously difficult conjecture. Decades later, his ambitious young nephew drives the defeated mathematician back into the hunt to prove Goldbach's Conjecture. . . but at the cost of the old man's sanity, and perhaps even his life.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781582341286 (1582341281)
Publish date: 2001-02-03
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages no: 220
Edition language: English
A friend of mine commented that he was feeling insane. The reason had something to do with this book, so naturally, I had to badger my local library into getting me a copy. This was a book about a man's relationship with his uncle. The uncle was considered by his brothers to have been the family fai...