Fantasia Mathematica

Front Cover
Clifton Fadiman
Springer Science & Business Media, Apr 1, 1997 - Mathematics - 298 pages
Clifton Fadiman's classic collection of mathematical stories, essays and anecdotes first published in 1958, is now back in print. Ranging from the poignant to the comical to the surreal, these selections include writing by Aldous Huxley, Martin Gardner, H.G. Wells, George Gamow, G.H. Hardy, Plato, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and many others. Humorous and mysterious, this collection will please mathematicians and everyone else who loves a good story full of stimulating ideas. In this intriguing collection of stories we learn of the young mathematician who chases his fiancee into the fourth dimension, how a group of Australian soldier's lives were saved by a lesson in basic topology, and of Mephisto's search for mathematical truth. Any interested reader will be amused, beguiled -- and perhaps even slightly instructed -- by this wonderfully diverse collection of writing. Clifton Fadiman's prolific career as an essayist, critic, anthologist, and radio show host has spanned the last five decades. His books include The Lifetime Reading Plan and a collection of essays, Party of One. He served for many years on the board of editors of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
 

Contents

Young Archimedes
1
Pythagoras and the Psychoanalyst
33
Mother and the Decimal Point
35
Jurgen Proves It by Mathematics
38
Peter Learns Arithmetic
44
Socrates and the Slave
47
The Death of Archimedes
55
IMAGINARIES
59
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
267
Mathematical Love
268
The Circle
269
The Circle and the Square
270
Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare
271
Euclid
272
To Think That Two and Two Are Four
273
The Uses of Mathematics
274

The Devil and Simon Flagg
61
And He Built a Crooked House
68
Inflexible Logic
89
NoSided Professor
97
Superiority
108
The Mathematical Voodoo
119
Expedition
136
The Captured CrossSection
138
A Bolts and the Moebius Strip
153
God and the Machine
169
The Tachypomp
180
The Island of Five Colors
194
The Last Magician
209
A Subway Named Moebius
220
The Universal Library
235
Postscript to The Universal Library
242
John Joness Dollar
246
FRACTIONS
257
A New Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens
259
The Unfortunate Topologist
264
There Once Was a Breathy Baboon
265
Yet What Are All
266
Arithmetic
275
Threes To Be Sung by Niels Bohr
276
Plane Geometry
277
He Thought He Saw Electrons Swift
279
Fearsome Fable
280
Bertrand Russells Dream
281
For All Practical Purposes
282
A Nightmare
283
An Infinity of Guests
284
No Power on Earth
286
x+1
287
The Receptive Bosom
288
Leinbachs Proof
289
Problem
290
A Letter to Tennyson
291
A Fable
292
There Was a Young Man from Trinity
293
There Was an Old Man Who Said Do
294
Relativity
295
There Was a Young Fellow Named Fisk
296
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