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Books

How could anyone enjoy Cédric Villani’s ‘Birth of a Theorem’? I think I’ve worked it out

Alexander Masters finds a great mathematician’s ‘popular’ book impenetrable from page four

28 February 2015

9:00 AM

28 February 2015

9:00 AM

Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure Cédric Villani (translated by Malcolm DeBevoise)

The Bodley Head, pp.250, £18.99, ISBN: 9781847922526

I’ve got a mathematical problem. Birth of a Theorem is by one of the great geniuses of today, a cosmopolitan, liberal-minded man who helps his wife look after their children, likes big-hearted folk songs, welcomes diversity and wears the same jewellery as I do. But as a contribution to the genre of popular maths, the book stinks.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £15.99 Tel: 08430 600033. Alexander Masters is the author of The Genius in My Basement, about his landlord in Cambridge, a maths obsessive.

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