novels seem to be mostly science fiction.
Below is merely a small taste of such
titles—past and recent:
1 to 999—This book is by famous sci-
ence fiction (and nonfiction) writer Isaac
Asimov, who once earned a living as a
chemist. In this book, cryptologists try to
break a simple code, with one of the key
clues being the frequency with which let-
ters appear.
Sixty Million Trillion Combinations—
Another book by Asimov, in which one of
his recurring characters in his “Black
Widower” mystery series, Tom Trumbull,
tries to convince an eccentric mathemati-
cian that his secret password is not safe.
Asimov had several more books with
mathematical connections, which are a
strong emphasis in many of his short story
collections and over 500 published books.
Kepler: A Novel—This John Banville
book gives a fictionalized, yet somewhat accurate, portrayal of the Renaissance mathe-
matician and astronomer—from his work to determine the orbits of the planets to
some more eccentric ideas, such as why there are only six planets in the solar system
in terms of Platonic solids.
The Difference Engine—In this science fiction, alternate reality tale by William
Gibson and Bruce Sterling, mathematicians Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace
(Byron) actually succeed in making the Difference Engine (for more about the Differ-
ence Engine, see “Math in Computing”).
The Nine Billion Names of God—Arthur C. Clarke’s classic story in which two
programmers hired by a Buddhist sect seek to find all true names of God by exhaust-
ing a combinatorial library of possibilities—a story that combines mathematics, com-
puters, and religion.
Round the Moon—Written in 1870 by Jules Verne, this classic book about space
travel comes complete with two chapters—chapter 4 “A Little Algebra” and chapter 15
“Hyperbola or Parabola”—containing detailed mathematics as discussed by the space-
faring crew.
Adventure of the Final Problem—And of course, one can’t forget Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, his sidekick Dr. Watson, and Holmes’s major adver-
sary, Professor Moriarty. This is the first story that mentions Moriarty, introducing 455
MATHEMATICAL RESOURCES
Jules Verne wrote the classic science fiction tale
Round the Moon.As well as being an entertaining
space travel story, it includes mathematical discus-
sions about algebra, parabolas, and hyperbolas.
Library of Congress.