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REVIEWS Contents
Mathematics at the Edinburgh Fringe
MATHEMATICS AT THE EDINBURGH FRINGE ’The root of minus one’ by Adam Somerset In a rather warm studio at the top of several flights of stairs sat a girl, Rachel, reading Ian Stewart’s From Here to Infinity and a man, Colwyn, strumming a rather out-of-tune guitar. This was the opening scene of the Edinburgh Fringe production of the play ’The root of minus one’ performed by Hartshorn–Hook Productions in association with Angel and Virgins Theatre Company. The play unfolded into a poignant insight into this couple’s struggle to come to terms with the death of their sister/sister-in-law. The sister, Michelle, had been a budding mathematician at university but had met with a fatal accident before completing her degree. She had developed a very close and possibly intimate relationship with her lecturer, Karen, who helped Rachel and Colwyn find out more about the maths in Michelle’s life. Discussions with Karen covered a wide variety of mathematical issues: certain historical mathematics topics such as counting, infinity and the Pythagoreans and other mathematical areas such as topology, calculus and as the title suggests – imaginary numbers. The actress playing the part of Karen also cleverly played the character Emily the counsellor who, without giving her own opinion, helped the couple to understand their own fears and feelings. The mathematical content came over with a passion that I hope would inspire others to take more than a passing interest in the subject, as well as a number of amusing insights about mathematicians. If the theatre company ever staged a production in London it would make a great trip for maths students – I would enjoy seeing it again. Noel Ann Bradshaw
Five-Minute Mathematics by Ehrhard Behrends, American Mathematical Society, 2008, 380 pp, £19.25, ISBN 978-0-82-184348-2. Five-Minute Mathematics started life as a series of one hundred weekly columns entitled Fünf Minuten Mathematik, published throughout 2003 and 2004 in Die Welt and the Berliner Morgenpost. The author’s hope was "to convince readers who were traumatized by school mathematics that the subject is not the boring, dry-as-dust subject that they remember, but a wellspring of fascination and excitement". The columns generated considerable interest when they first appeared, and the author decided to collect them all together in book form, first in a German edition, and now in an English edition published by the American Mathematical Society and Oxford University Press. The columns have been carefully revised and extra material has been added when this seemed appropriate. The columns are a delight to read. They range very widely through mathematics, both ancient and modern, from Euclid’s proof that there are infinitely many primes to the ’P = NP?’ Conjecture, from straightedge-and-compass constructions to the Monty Hall problem in probability, and from the mathematics of music to Andrew Wiles’s proof of Fermat’s last theorem. Professor Behrends is a well-known expositor who will shortly be taking over as Chair of the European Mathematical Society’s committee on Raising Public Awareness of Mathematics. He has certainly raised public awareness with these fine columns, which are clearly and engagingly written, and he does not shy away from difficult topics when he can find a way to explain them at an appropriate level – even the Riemann hypothesis and the work of Perelman find a place within these pages. The publishers have also done an excellent job; the print is clear and there are a large number of full-colour pictures, all printed on high-quality paper. The book is a delight to dip into, and can be highly recommended as a stocking present for yourself or someone else this Christmas. Robin Wilson
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