Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life

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Lenny's description:
Robin Wilson, British Carroll scholar and noted mathematics professor, paints a charming picture of Charles Dodgson in this slender biography. Skipping over the most chronicled aspects of Dodgson's life with only a sharp side note deriding rumors of his pedophilia as bad history and bad psychology, Wilson focuses on Dodgson's mathematical and educational accomplishments: pamphlets and books on Euclid, an efficient way of calculating determinants, astute analysis of election methods, and systems of mnemonics and ciphers. Wilson also includes puzzles, a number of Dodgson's photographs, and humorous and satirical letters.

Seller's description:
A penetrating work that explores the amazing imagination and mathematical genius of the man who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Just when we thought we knew everything about Lewis Carroll, here comes a highly original biography that will appeal to Alice fans everywhere. Fascinated by the inner life of Charles Lutwidge Dodson, Robin Wilson, a Carroll scholar and a noted mathematics professor, has produced this revelatory book—filled with more than one hundred striking and often playful illustrations—that examines the many inspirations and sources for Carroll's fantastical writings, mathematical and otherwise. As Wilson demonstrates, Carroll—who published serious, if occasionally eccentric, works in the fields of geometry, logic, and algebra—made significant contributions to subjects as varied as voting patterns and the design of tennis tournaments, in the process creating imaginative recreational puzzles based on mathematical ideas. In the tradition of Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind and Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing, this is an engaging look at the incredible genius of one of mathematics' and literature's most enigmatic minds. 100 illustrations.

Features:

ISBN13: 9780393060270
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product details:

Item number (ASIN): 0393060276
Author: Robin Wilson
Dewey Decimal Number: 510.92
Edition: First Edition
ISBN: 0393060276
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Package Dimensions: 110 x 560 x 830 (hundredths-inches)
Publication Date: November 17, 2008
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Binding: Hardcover

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Amazon.com customer reviews:

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Very Interesting Book
I liked this book because it is a bio of Lewis Carroll from a mathematical standpoint. Yes, it does touch on his literary career, but is mostly about his development as a mathematician and an Oxford Don.

Rating:

- A Mathematical Biography
In this short but charming book, the author introduces the reader to Charles Dodgson whose pen name was Lewis Carroll - creator of Alice in Wonderland. Although the book is categorized as a biography, relatively little of Dodgson personal life is presented. Instead, the author has chosen to focus more on his mathematical genius and accomplishments. Nevertheless, one can glimpse what Dodgson's life must have been like through the many quotes from his diary and his letters, as well as through his dedication and passion for thinking up and solving various mathematical problems - several of which are presented in this book. The writing style is clear, friendly, authoritative and engaging. The book's 209 pages of main text include a great many interesting pictures and useful diagrams, thus making this a relatively short read. Because of its many mathematical problems and brain teasers, this book would most likely be loved the most by math buffs.

Rating:

- A puzzling fellow
For most people familiar with Lewis Carroll, it is because he was the writer of that classic story, Alice in Wonderland. What's less known is that even before he made his name in literature, he was a mathematician of some prominence, and that this field would creep into his fictional writing. Actually, Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym for Charles Dodgson, an Oxford educated mathematician of the mid-1800s. He would also teach at Oxford and start to write his stories there, as well as mathematical works. Always eager to please children (including the inspirational Alice), he would become one of the first people to develop recreational mathematics, a field that focuses on some of the more wonderfully entertaining aspects of numbers (particularly the whole numbers). Robin Wilson's Lewis Carroll in Wonderland serves as a biography of Dodgson/Carroll, focusing on his work in math. The first half or so is more filled with biographical facts; it is in the second half that we get more of the math, most of which requires no higher learning in the field. We get some of the word play, puzzles, logic problems and riddles that were Carroll's forte. Many are interesting, but admittedly, some of the problems that seem presented as logic problems are anything but, coming off more as tricky riddles and leaving the reader feel a little cheated. If you have an interest in the life of Lewis Carroll, this would probably be a good book to read; on the other hand, if you enjoy recreational mathematics, this book is merely okay. I tend to think of this book more as a biography, so I'll rate it as a good, four-star read, well-written and with plenty of illustrations.

Rating:

- "Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely,
and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Excellent advice, of course, but in the case of Charles Dodgson, the story is so enormous, one may never finish. Author of the two famous Alice books, creator of hundreds of early photographs, mathematician with papers on logic, algebra, geometry and the mathematics of voting, author of almost 100,000 letters, and diarist with ten massive collected volumes -- it's amazing that one person could produce such a volume of work. The Alice books have gone through hundreds of editions over the years, there are collections of his puzzles and scholarly analyses of his works on the mathematics of voting (some of which would cast light on the complexities of Amazon's Ranking systems). Dodgson was even something of a wine expert with a delicious spoof on wine tasting based on experts in tasting jam (see the first Comment). Robin Wilson has put together an excellent summary of Dodgson's life and some superb extracts from his writing for children. He alludes to his contributions to photography, albeit with very few examples; Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll by Douglas R. Nickel is an excellent source. The heart of the book is an assessment of Dodgson's work as a mathematician. It's not really necessary to work out all of the problems -- although it is certainly possible to do so with Wilson's help and basic algebra and geometry training. The book moves swiftly, but be warned, some of the problems are so cleverly written, you may find yourself trapped and spend several pleasant minutes, even hours, working your way through to a solution. Either way, you'll come away from this excellent study with a deeper appreciation of Dodgson's complex imagination and with a real appreciation of Wilson's skill in bringing that imagination to life. Robert C. Ross 2009

Rating:

- A different perspective on Lewis Carroll
Few people know that Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was an accomplished mathematician and logician, who held a lecturership in Maths at Oxford. Throughout his many children's books (the two Alice in Wonderland books being the best known) one can see the hand of a person obsessed with logic, numbers and wordplay. This book provides some of Lewis Carroll's life history, but the latter half of the book focuses specifically on his life as a mathematician. He developed some famous mathematical puzzles (as given in the book), a much easier way of calculating the determinants of 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 matrices (explained in the book), and quite an ingenious way of drawing inferences in propositional logic (a diagrammatic method he called the "Game of Logic" as shown in the book). If you are not that much into puzzles and logic you might get more benefit from buying a plain biography on Lewis Carroll. However, the maths and puzzles are not crucial to the enjoyment of the book, and you can skip any of them without losing much. Also, the answers to the puzzles are all in the back of the book, and it is fun going through it, even if you don't work them out. If you love the quirky writing style of Lewis Carroll's books and also like working out puzzles, you will love this book and get the most out of it.