Explain this
1089 and All That
How the publisher describes it:
“This excellent book, written by the established author David Acheson, makes mathematics accessible to everyone. Providing an entertaining and witty overview of the subject, the text includes several fascinating puzzles, and is accompanied by numerous illustrations and sketches by world famous cartoonists. This unusual book is one of the most readable explanations of mathematics available.”
Review by Marten Gallagher
In brief:
It treated subjects briefly but in depth and breadth, linked them together, didn't make assumptions about my mathematical understanding, but neither did it waste time looking into all the minutiae of the subject.
“Newton may often have lectured to empty rooms”
I took an interesting journey into mathematics last weekend. Just a short away break. The ticket landed on the doormat on Saturday morning and I was gently eased through the 1089 ‘trick’, the detail that lies behind Pythagoras' triangle, topology and the Koenigsberg bridge problem.
I had, like many others, visited here before but this time I was treated to a little of the history, emotion and magic that lay behind the numbers.
After a brief sojourn in algebra I was on to Kepler and the elliptical planetary motion of Kepler, discovering along the way that Newton may often have lectured to empty rooms.
All this was a warm up for what was, for me, the really magical part of the trip. I travelled the shortest distance between two, three or four points courtesy of the soap-film road planning department. On re-discovering that ‘not all the numbers are on this line’ I was becoming totally absorbed in this journey.
A brief and engaging dalliance at Π (pi) and the shape of cans, things really became mysterious and enthralling. I was immersed in a world of triangulated circles, bouncing toy spiders, guitar harmonics, spilt milk and a gallery of Klimt artwork. But the Klimt I was seeing was not by the artist himself but created by chemical reactions under the supervision of Belousov and Zhabotinskii.
All this was indeed magical, gripping stuff but all paled into insignificance when I was faced with the pendulum swinging upside down. Could it really be that the rope-trick master’s flute vibrations lay behind the rigidity of the vertical rope?
The weekend break was nearly over but the finale left me with a lasting memory - it had been trailed throughout the journey by my guide - a sort of grand unification theory. My guide proposed the most ingenious and difficult to shrug off connection between the three perhaps most mysterious numbers in mathematics,: e, i and (pi).
If you would like to follow in my footsteps all you need is ‘1089 and All That’.
On the surface this book is another of those 'let’s look at the funny things about numbers' books. But no, this one, for me at least, was far more than that. It treated subjects briefly but in depth and breadth, linked them together, didn’t make assumptions about my mathematical understanding, but neither did it waste time looking into all the minutiae of the subject. Truly inspiring and a great read over a weekend.
Marten Gallagher • ATM Web Editor
1089 and All That
David Acheson
2002 Oxford University Press
ISBN 0198516231
