Love and Math, Edward Frenkel
Love and Math, Edward Frenkel
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Love and Math
The Heart of Hidden Reality

Author: Edward Frenkel

Narrator: Mike Lenz

Unabridged: 10 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 05/06/2025


Synopsis

An awesome, globe-spanning, and New York Times bestselling journey through the beauty and power of mathematics

What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren't even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry.

In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.

Love and Math tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man's journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century's leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat's last theorem, that had seemed intractable before.

At its core, Love and Math is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on September 27, 2016

I wanted so much to love this book, but it was difficult. About half of the book is about Frenkel's life; and it was fascinating. The other half, interleaved with his memoirs, are descriptions of Frenkel's mathematical work and discoveries. I had a great deal of trouble following the descriptions of......more

Goodreads review by Audrey on October 28, 2016

I loved this book and found it riveting. My parents gave it to me last Christmas, and I avoided reading it because the cover and description didn't give many clues as to the content. (Sadly, I DO judge books by their covers.) I'd also never heard of Frenkel (yikes, that's embarrassing). Once I crack......more

Goodreads review by Atila on July 21, 2018

Uma discussão legal sobre a matemática por trás da física moderna, que gira em torno da auto-biografia do autor. Muito legal ouvir o que era alguém judeu se formar em matemática na época da União Soviética. Acabei apreciando mais pela história do que pelos conceitos passados. Já que perdi bastante p......more

Goodreads review by Yasiru on November 06, 2015

The general tone of negative and middling reviews for this book suggest why it is (especially in countries like the United States) that while popular science seems to be embraced more and more by the masses, actual scientific and mathematical literary seems to be on the decline or finds itself at le......more

Goodreads review by Athan on November 11, 2016

This is, comfortably, the best popular math book I’ve ever had the fortune to lay my eyes on. I have a couple degrees in the subject. One in applied math, that I studied in college, and one in pure math that I got twelve years later. Indeed, I coincided with the author at Harvard, and his description......more


Quotes

A New York Times Science Bestseller

"Powerful, passionate and inspiring."—New York Times

"Love and Math is a book by a very brilliant Russian-born mathematician, Edward Frenkel, who tells his life story while he's telling you some of the fundamentals of mathematics in language that interested laypeople can understand."—Moshe Safdie, New York Times, Sunday Review

"[Frenkel's] winsome new memoir... is three things: a Platonic love letter to mathematics; an attempt to give the layman some idea of its most magnificent drama-in-progress; and an autobiographical account, by turns inspiring and droll, of how the author himself came to be a leading player in that drama." —New York Review of Books

"With every page, I found my mind's eye conjuring up a fictional image of the book's author, writing by candlelight in the depths of the Siberian winter like Omar Sharif's Doctor Zhivago in the David Lean movie adaptation of Pasternak's famous novel. Love and Math is Edward Frenkel's Lara poems... As is true for all the great Russian novels, you will find in Frenkel's tale that one person's individual story of love and overcoming adversity provides both a penetrating lens on society and a revealing mirror into the human mind." —Keith Devlin, Huffington Post

"Love and Math = fast-paced adventure story + intimate memoir + insider's account of the quest to decode a Rosetta Stone at the heart of modern math. It all adds up to a thrilling intellectual ride--and a tale of surprising passion."—Steven Strogatz, Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of x

"Through his fascinating autobiography, mathematician Edward Frenkel is opening for us a window into the ambitious Langlands Program--a sweeping network that interconnects many branches of mathematics and physics. A breathtaking view of modern mathematics."—Mario Livio, astrophysicist, and author of The Golden Ratio and Brilliant Blunders

"This very readable, passionately written, account of some of the most exciting ideas in modern mathematics is highly recommended to all who are curious lovers of beauty."—David Gross, Nobel Laureate in Physics

"I don't know if I've ever used the words love and math together, but this book changed that. In the tradition of his heroes Andre Weil and C. N. Yang, Edward Frenkel writes of the objective beauty of numbers. Like musical notes, they exist apart from the mind, daring us to fathom their depths and assemble them in arcane narratives that tell the story of us. Reading this book, one is compelled to drop everything and give math another try; to partake of the ultimate mystery."—Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files

"Two fascinating narratives are interwoven in Love and Math, one mathematical, the other personal... Frenkel deftly takes the reader ... to the far reaches of our current understanding. He seeks to lay bare the beauty of mathematics for everyone. As he writes, 'There is nothing in this world that is so deep and exquisite and yet so readily available to all.'"—Nature