Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities

December 1, 2008
For an exceptional reader, this book could mean a million dollars. For among the many doors that Stewart opens into the wonderland of mathematics, one offers a tantalizing perspective on the Riemann hypothesis, a conjecture so rich with implications that philanthropists have offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who can prove it. Of course, armchair mathematicians are not likely to find the path to that money. But they are certain to find pleasure in this cornucopia of puzzles, brainteasers, and digressions. Readers will delight, for instance, in testing their wits against Euclids theorems, in enlarging their understanding of geometry by constructing antigravity cones, and in allying themselves with an ancient genius by calculating just how much Archimedes could have moved the earth with his famous fulcrum. But besides inviting his readers to exercise their gray matter, Stewart initiates them into vertigo-inducing mysteries, including the wild dynamics of chaos and the unearthly beauty of logarithmic spirals. The ideal book for dispelling the supposed drudgery of mathematics with its real magic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)