The Wild Numbers

As a pseudo-mathematician going through a mid-life career crisis, I empathized with the main character (Isaac Swift) in this book. After proving an enormously important result, Isaac reasons why he should be the one to prove it when so many superiors had tried and failed before. He checks and re-checks his work many times over, being afraid to present it to a superior mathematician for fear of making an embarrassing error. When he is eventually convinced that the result is correct, he takes extreme care to protect himself, as if conveying his new result is the purpose of his existence. There are several other characteristics of Professor Swift that I am sure many mathematicians can relate to, especially in social situations. Just a cautionary note: at the beginning, I found the book a bit artificial and not so realistic. But as I read on, it got much better, and details were revealed that made the artificialness disappear. The book just gets better as you go on, and surprisingly accurately captures the mind of a mathematician. This is a definite read for anybody in mathematics, especially younger people who may be debating whether their career choice is right for themselves.

Isaac Swift is a mediocre mathematics professor who hasn't come up with significant research since his thesis years ago. In the publish or perish world of academia, he increasingly feels pressure to produce. Desperate, he attempts to solve the famous Wild Number Theorem, a feat that would bring him fame and glory. Schogt offers the reader insight into the seldomly explored world and mind of a math professor but, don't worry, you need not know number theory to enjoy this well-written novel. We are with Isaac through his unexciting and lonely social life (his wife has left him), his interactions with students and rival professors, and his titanic struggle to solve the Wild Number problem. In the end, Isaac's problems do get solved in an unexpected and satisfying way. This is an excellent novel; the prose is accessible and the story moves forward quickly. Having an MS in Mathematics myself, I enjoyed the references to number theory that Schogt, himself mathematically trained, cleverly uses to make the non-existent Wild Number Theorem almost seem like a real problem in mathematics. I wanted to get out my pencil and, like Isaac, plunge into solving this problem! Still, all readers, including the math-challenged, will enjoy this universal human story. I give this novel four theorem proofs out of five.

Many, probably most, novels that feature mathematicians or scientists have a genius as protagonist. There are many variations on that theme (the unrecognized genius, the failed genius, the temporarily failed but ultimately triumphant genius, the evil genius, the genius who doesn't recognize his/her true talent until given proper encouragement, etc.). However, reading about geniuses can eventually become tiresome.The striking thing about this book is that the main character is perfectly ordinary. Of course, there are lots of novels about ordinary people, but very few about ordinary _mathematicians_, and that subject matter gives this book a peculiar charm. It's rather well written, too.Overall, I'd say it's not a masterpiece, but well worth reading.

What a charming book about a young mathematician who set out to prove a famous mathematical conjecture. Sounds boring? You will be surprised: this is not only a book that explains the inner drama of a person who obsessively tries to realize a most ambitious goal, but also a tale full of unexpected twists, with an attempt of a murder and a love story. Schogt writes in the crystal clear prose of Paul Auster. The obsessive drive of the hero resembles that of "Hunger" of Hamsun but the book is much lighter in tone with occasional witty observations.Strongly recommended to the wives of mathematicians and everybody else.

A highly entertaining, accurate portrait of a particularly bizarre social scene: the real life of mathematicians. Yes, these people tend to be brilliant, but they're also neurotic, romantic, histrionic, and silly. Schogt clearly knows this world intimately -- and gives us just enough information to flesh it out, without going over the non-math head. The Wild Numbers is a darkly comic tale of envy and ambition, set in an environment that (to most of us, anyway) is deeply alien: the hottest of intellectual hothouses. That Shogt pulls this off without once condescending, or lapsing into the standard tropes of the Academic Novel, is a startling feat. It seems counterintuitive, but Schogt is of course right: the math novel should be a thriller. After all, this is a dangerous place. Kissinger once said that the most vicious politics he'd ever witnessed were in academia, because "the stakes are so small."