杏吧原创

John Baez of the University of California, Riverside, works on quantum
gravity and mathematical tools called n-categories. So it鈥檚 no surprise to find
him engrossed in Hirotaka Tamanoi鈥檚 Elliptic Genera and Vertex Operator
Super-Algebras(Springer-Verlag, 拢34, ISBN 3540660062). But Baez鈥檚
travel reading isn鈥檛 always that heavyweight. On his last trip, he read Simon
Winchester鈥檚 The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity,
and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Harper Perennial,
拢9/$13, ISBN 006099486X), which, he says, is 鈥渧ery entertaining鈥�.
He鈥檚 currently reading Neutron Star (Ballantine, $6.99 ISBN
0345336941)鈥攏ot another work on deformed space, but Larry Niven鈥檚 classic
work of science fiction from 1968.