If you enjoyed Fermat's Last Theorem, you'll devour this. However,
you don't need to be an academic to understand its imaginative
exploration of the allure and danger of genius. Old Uncle Petros is
a failure. The black sheep of a wealthy Greek family, he lives as a
recluse surrounded by dusty books in an Athenian suburb. It takes
his talented nephew to penetrate his rich inner world and discover
that this broken man was once a mathematical prodigy, a golden
youth whose ambition was to solve one of pure maths' most famous
unproven hypotheses - Goldbach's Conjecture. Fascinated, the young
man sets out to discover what Uncle Petros found - and what he was
forced to sacrifice. Himself a mathematician as well as a novelist,
Doxiadis succeeds in shining a light into the spectral world of
abstract number theory where unimaginable concepts and bizarre
realities glitter with a cold, magical and ultimately destructive
beauty. (Kirkus UK)
Uncle Petros is a family joke. An ageing recluse, he lives alone in
a suburb of Athens, playing chess and tending to his garden. If you
didn't know better, you'd surely think he was one of life's
failures. But his young nephew suspects otherwise. For Uncle
Petros, he discovers, was once a celebrated mathematician,
brilliant and foolhardy enough to stake everything on solving a
problem that had defied all attempts at proof for nearly three
centuries - Goldbach's Conjecture. His quest brings him into
contact with some of the century's greatest mathematicians,
including the Indian prodigy Ramanujan and the young Alan Turing.
But his struggle is lonely and single-minded, and by the end it has
apparently destroyed his life. Until that is a final encounter with
his nephew opens up to Petros, once more, the deep mysterious
beauty of mathematics. Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is an
inspiring novel of intellectual adventure, proud genius, the
exhilaration of pure mathematics - and the rivalry and antagonism
which torment those who pursue impossible goals.
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