While nonmathematicians may have trouble comprehending Roberts’ mathematical achievements, they will enjoy this entertaining...
A biography of the brilliant mathematician John Horton Conway (b. 1937).
Roberts (Wind Wizard: Alan G. Davenport and the Art of Wind Engineering, 2012, etc.) met her subject when he helped vet a manuscript of her award-winning earlier work, King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry (2006). Now a distinguished professor of applied and computational mathematics at Princeton and a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Conway got his start at Cambridge, where he first achieved fame for his invention of the Game of Life in 1970. The “game” is now incorporated into computer programs that explore the possibilities of simulating human cognition and the potentialities of artificial intelligence and self-reproducing robots. Initially, participants played the game by manipulating stones on a square grid. At Conway’s instigation, a group of Cambridge friends joined him in investigating the possibility of starting with two groups of colored stones (one representing live cells and the others, dead cells). The aim was to observe how, by moving them according to a few simple rules, they might evolve into complex structures, depending on the initial configuration and the rules. The game gained popularity when Conway's friend Martin Gardner wrote about it in his Scientific American column. With the development of computer capabilities, it has proved to have important scientific applications in simulating the behavior of self-organizing systems in various fields, including population studies and artificial intelligence. The emergence of unexpected patterns provides an analogy for evolution. In the appendices, the author describes some of Conway's other contributions in applied mathematics, including the invention of new numbers that he named “surreal.” While he was becoming famous as a mathematician, Conway was cultivating an over-the-top personal style as a campus eccentric with an unconventional lecturing style. The book is enlivened by anecdotes provided by family, colleagues, and friends.
While nonmathematicians may have trouble comprehending Roberts’ mathematical achievements, they will enjoy this entertaining portrait of a charismatic genius.Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62040-593-2
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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