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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
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English

FINDING FIBONACCI

Keith Devlin

The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World

Fibonacci, whose 1202 book Liber abbaci quite literally changed the world and affected the lives of everyone alive today, introduced Arabic numerals to the West. Devlin's project took nearly ten years to complete.

Devlin was drawn to the Fibonacci historical detective story by a recognition that his own career was very similar to Leonardo's, to a degree that only became deeper and more profound the further he went into the historical research. Now in FINDING FIBONACCI, he takes the reader behind the scenes of that ten-year detective project, with all of its highs, lows, frustrations, false starts, unexpected turns, tragedies, amusements, and occasional lucky breaks. If you thought that writing a medieval history of science book is mostly a matter of spending hours in archives, this book will show just how far from reality that perception is.

The recent success of Edward Frenkel's Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality and Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking are just the most recent titles to show there is strong interest in mathematics trade books that adopt a strong first-person perspective, incorporate the life and reflections of the writer, and describe what it is to do mathematics for a living.

Dr. Keith Devlin is a co-founder and Executive Director of Stanford University's H-STAR institute (Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research), a co-founder of Stanford's Media X network—a campuswide research network focused on the design and use of interactive technologies—and a Senior Researcher in Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). NPR's "Math Guy," he is the author of more than twenty-eight books, including The Math Gene.
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Published 2017-04-01 by Princeton University Press

Comments

[Devlin] talks his way into Italian research libraries in search of early manuscripts, photographs all 11 street signs on Via Leonardo Fibonacci in Florence and strives to cultivate a love for numbers in his readers.

Finding Fibonacci [does] much to restore Leonardo to his proper place in contemporary Western culture.

Finding Fibonacci showcases Devlin's writerly flair. My favourite passages are the incredible story of how Liber Abaci (or at least, the edition he wrote in 1228, the sole surviving one) became available in English for the first time - to this day the only modern-language translation.

In his jaunty book Finding Fibonacci, Keith Devlin sets out to tell the elusive story of the 13th-century mathematician Leonardo of Pisa.

Devlin relates Leonardo's adventures with brio and charm. Readers will enjoy this deft and engaging mix of history, mathematics, and personal travelogue.

[E]ngaging and entertaining.

Though most of us only know about Leonardo of Pisa (aka Fibonacci) because of the numbers named after him, he was in fact the Steve Jobs of the thirteenth century who ushered in a revolution--as we learn from this fascinating book that reads by turns as a detective novel, a moving personal journey, and a meditation on the fate of modernity. Highly recommended to all lovers of math and history. --Edward Frenkel, professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Love and Math