The great mathematical problems of the 20th century and the minds behind them
are an endless source of fascination to John Casti, professor of mathematical
modelling at the Sante Fe Institute, New Mexico. Right now he鈥檚 reading The
Hilbert Challenge (Oxford, 2000), Jeremy Gray鈥檚 intriguing account
of how David Hilbert drew up his famous list of 23 problems in 1900, setting the
tone for much of the 20th century鈥檚 maths. Part of the fascination is
discovering the historical context of Hilbert鈥檚 list, as well as checking out
how many of the problems have now been solved.
He鈥檚 also reading Jon Agar鈥檚 Turing and the Universal Machine (Icon,
2001), a brief history of the computer and how it intertwined with the life of
the great mathematician.
Jeremy Bernstein鈥檚 The Merely Personal (Ivan Dee, 2001) intrigues
Casti with its entertaining profiles of personalities as diverse as physicists
Hans Bethe and Robert Oppenheimer, mathematician Kurt G枚del, chess player
Bobby Fischer, and the poet W. H. Auden.
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