MATHEMATICAL FICTION website
Alex Kasman
stories, plays, movies and TV shows) that are about mathematics. I am
attempting to compile a (somewhat) comprehensive and useful list of this
"mathematical fiction". Please use it to learn about fiction that might
be of interest to you and help me by writing a brief description of any
works you may know of that I have not yet included in the list.
WEBSITE: http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT
Thanks,
Alex
Stephen Montgomery-Smith
His wife was a Ph.D. in math.
Maybe it was caleld "Presumed Innnocent"? I don't recall.
--
Stephen Montgomery-Smith ste...@math.missouri.edu
307 Math Science Building ste...@showme.missouri.edu
Department of Mathematics ste...@missouri.edu
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 65211
USA
Phone (573) 882 4540
Fax (573) 882 1869
John R Ramsden
>
> There is a surprisingly large body of literature (including books, short
> stories, plays, movies and TV shows) that are about mathematics. I am
> attempting to compile a (somewhat) comprehensive and useful list of this
> "mathematical fiction". Please use it to learn about fiction that might
> be of interest to you and help me by writing a brief description of any
> works you may know of that I have not yet included in the list.
Don't forget the Sherlock Holmes stories. In his days as an academic,
before turning to crime, Professor Moriarty published a monograph on
the Binomial Theorem.
Cheers
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John R Ramsden (j...@redmink.demon.co.uk)
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The new is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed.
St Augustine.
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denis.feldmann
John R Ramsden <j...@redmink.demon.co.uk> a écrit dans le message :
389c09eb...@news.demon.co.uk...
> Alex Kasman <kas...@math.cofc.edu> wrote:
> >
> > There is a surprisingly large body of literature (including books, short
> > stories, plays, movies and TV shows) that are about mathematics. I am
> > attempting to compile a (somewhat) comprehensive and useful list of this
> > "mathematical fiction". Please use it to learn about fiction that might
> > be of interest to you and help me by writing a brief description of any
> > works you may know of that I have not yet included in the list.
>
> Don't forget the Sherlock Holmes stories. In his days as an academic,
> before turning to crime,
Not clear; after all, Moriarty is still a respectable professor at the time
of his dramatic confrontation with Homes, so why would he not be already a
criminal as early as when he published his mathematical results (while we
are at it, the other publication we know of him is "the Dynamics of an
Asteroid", which sounds almost mathematical too.
In one of the Black Widows stories, if i remember well, Asimov makes Harry
reconstruct what Moriarty had *really* in mind with that publication, for a
contribution to the Bakers Street Irregulars Society. Some other Asimov's
stories (beside "a feeling of power") could barely feel under "mathematical
fiction", i believe)
Keith Ramsay
Somewhere I have a syllabus for a course that was taught on
mathematical science fiction, although it might take me awhile to
find it.
Try to find:
- _Fantasia Mathematica_, a collection.
- _The Blind Geometer_
- A short story titled "Art Thou Mathematics?"
- Rudy Rucker, _White Light_
- A bunch of stuff by Greg Egan
Stanislaw Lem's _His Master's Voice_ is narrated by a mathematician
protagonist who talks about some exotic foundational work in
statistics which occurred in the world of the novel.
Keith Ramsay
Robin Chapman
Alex Kasman <kas...@math.cofc.edu> wrote:
>
> There is a surprisingly large body of literature (including books,
short
> stories, plays, movies and TV shows) that are about mathematics. I am
> attempting to compile a (somewhat) comprehensive and useful list of
this
> "mathematical fiction". Please use it to learn about fiction that
might
> be of interest to you and help me by writing a brief description of
any
> works you may know of that I have not yet included in the list.
>
You should include Don DeLillo's novel "Ratner's Star". Alas,
it's so many years since I read it that I can't generate a reliable
plot summary, but very roughly it's about a child prodigy mathematician
who joins a very strange research institute.
--
Robin Chapman, http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~rjc/rjc.html
"`The twenty-first century didn't begin until a minute
past midnight January first 2001.'"
John Brunner, _Stand on Zanzibar_ (1968)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Dave L. Renfro
[sci.math Mon, 31 Jan 2000 11:16:40 -0500]
<http://forum.swarthmore.edu/epigone/sci.math/flermmordar>
wrote
> There is a surprisingly large body of literature (including
> books, short stories, plays, movies and TV shows) that are
> about mathematics. I am ttempting to compile a (somewhat)
> comprehensive and useful list of this "mathematical fiction".
> Please use it to learn about fiction that might be of interest
> to you and help me by writing a brief description of any works
> you may know of that I have not yet included in the list.
>
> WEBSITE: http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT
>
> Thanks,
> Alex
Some links and items:
The Math in the Movies Page
<http://world.std.com/~reinhold/mathmovies.html>
Keith Devlin's November 1998 essay "Math Becomes Way Cool"
<http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_98.html>
Robert Silverberg (editor), OTHER DIMENSIONS, Hawthorne, 1973.
<http://www.best.com/~contento/t79.html#A1861>
Silverberg's book contains, among other stories about the
fourth (and other) dimensions, the following:
"Captured Cross-Section" by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
(Amazing Feb '29)
"...And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein
(Astounding Feb '41)
You might also want to look through the list at
<http://www.pazsaz.com/twilight.html>.
For example, at this site I came across the Twilight Zone
episode "Little Girl Lost" (Originally Aired 3/16/1962) which
I recall as being about a girl that went through a portal
that opened in the wall under her bed into the fourth
dimension. The characters discussed how difficult would
be for her to find her way back (they could still hear her
calling for help), making the analogy of a 2-dimensional
shadow constantly slipping into various 2-dimensional
slices of our world without being able to "see" all three
dimensions. She was eventually rescued by her dog.
More on this episode here:
<http://petenjen.11net.com/zone/tz/tzpicturesindex.html>
Edwin A. Abbott's FLATLAND is on-line at
<http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/eaa/FL.HTM>
Issac Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" is on-line at
<http://loki.sacredheart.edu/cas/math/mattej/asimov.html>
Jonathan Matte's Distance Learning Course MA 103 (Spring 2000)
at Sacred Heart University: "Exploring Mathematics Through
Literature and Technology"
<http://loki.sacredheart.edu/cas/math/mattej/ma103.html>
Dartmouth College Course 18 (Winter 1999),
"Mathematics and Science Fiction: The Fire in the Equations"
<http://math.dartmouth.edu/~c18w99/>
You'll especially want to look at the "Related Links"
and "Course Readings" links at this Dartmouth course site.
There is also a link to Rudy Rucker's on-line lecture "The 4th
Dimension in Mathematics and Science Fiction" at
<http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/video/video.html>.
Dave L. Renfro