Product Description

The innumerate may initially find this undramatic material for a novel.Yet Doxiadis offers up a beautifully imagined narrative, which reveals ararefied world of the intellect that few people will ever enter, in whichnumbers are entirely animate entities, each possessed of "a distinctpersonality." Without ever alienating the reader, he demonstrates theenchantments of this art as well as the ambition, envy, and search for glorythat permeate its apostles. Balancing the narrator's own awkward move intoadulthood with the painful memories of his brilliant relative, Doxiadisshows how seductive the world of numbers can be, and how cruel a mistress."A mathematician is born, not made," Petros declares--an inheritance thatproves both a curse and a gift. --Burhan Tufail ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Read it before starting your PhD
It is a very fascinating mathematical story about a bright mind who spent his life on a very difficult problem. The book is very well written and it gives a lot of mathematical details the most important ones about number theory Godel's theorem etc. If you are a PhD student you will identify the dilemmas you have encountered when hitting on a dead end in your research. If you are not a student you will still enjoy the endeavor in the mathematical challenges of the past century. I am in general a slow reader but I read it in one night.

well done novel that serves as light and entertaining reading about a mathematical mind obsessed with an unsolved math problem
Uncle Petros & Goldbach's Conjecture is a well written book about how a ambitious and brilliant mathematician gets caught up in the pursuit of an unsolved mathematics problem to the exclusion of all other aspects of life. The story is told through the eyes of his nephew who progresses from childhood to middle age during the course of the book. Awed and fascinated by his mysterious uncle, the boy becomes enamored of mathematics himself. Since I don't want to give away the plot, I will just say that the lives of the uncle and nephew are intertwined throughout the book in an exciting way that keeps you wondering what will happen until the very satisfying ending. I highly recommend this book both for the writing style of the author and for its subject matter.

I dont like this book
I want to make a short comment here:
1) This book is quite confusing. It mixed up the real story with the make up one.
2) Saying that Ramanujun thought Goldbach Conjecture is wrong was a huge mistake. Everyone believe that Goldbach Conjecture is true. And Ramanujun is a real genius. I cannot stand this make up part.

A charming small novel
Short, simple, and totally engaging.Just the thing to have with you on a trip, or to sit down with for a pleasant afternoon.

fun read for the mathematicallly curious
I picked up this book after watching the movie A Beautiful Mind -- it's a delightful, easy-to-read novel about an aspiring mathemetician who tries to get to know the truth about his eccentric mathemetician uncle.The book details the uncle's life-long struggle to solve Goldbach's Conjecture, which (for you non-mathemeticians, like me) posits that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes.I felt like the novel showed a somewhat realistic perspective of a driven, obsessed scientist, and showed how the scientist's activities and behaviors affected and even alienated those around him.The protagonist is the only member of the mathemetician's family who bothers to get to know and appreciate him -- and that is a struggle, as the mathemetician often does things to alienate his nephew.Don't be put off by the math; it's actuallyq quite easy to read. ... Read more

Product Description
A detailed description of a most important unsolved mathematical problem-The Goldbach conjecture-is provided. For graduate students, lecturers and researchers in number theory and mathematical history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Very good book
This book is very good for people who would be interested in solving this tough math problem.

Absolutely the best book on this subject
Now Goldbach conjecture is a $1Million question.This book is the best possible book to learn about the subject with the available progresses.The author himself has proved towards the finalgoal. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
Uncle Petros is a family joke - an ageing recluse in a suburb of Athens, playing chess and gardening. His young nephew soon discovers his uncle was once a celebrated mathematician who staked all on solving the problem of Goldbach's Conjecture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

are mathematicians born or made
This book is a compulsively readable exploration of the nature and source of mathematical compulsion.It shows how exhilarating and destructive mathematics can be; it contains some salutary warnings as well for those who would tackle "big" issues in math.The book will teach you some math along the way.

highly recommended Greek tragedy in less then 200 pages about theoretical maths
Uncle Petros and Golbach's Conjecture was originally a best selling Greek novel and has now been published over 20 languages so don't get switched off by the title and subject matter. Forget about it being about maths and in fact think of Moby Dick to place this book. It's about obsession and pride in chasing the impossible dream. You understand the thrill and terror of chasing impossible dreams.

Right now let's get the maths out of the way. Golbach's Conjecture first stated in the 18th century suggests that:

Every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes.

But mathematicians lack proof that in all circumstance it would hold.For example think about Physics where if dealing with the very big or the very small ordinary scientific understanding ceases to work.So could this be the case in Mathematics? Yes over my head as well!But the author is a childhood mathematical genius who submitted original research at 15 before even starting his degree and also an acclaimed film maker and writer.So he both understands the mathematical issues and can write so that we understand and care.

We first meet Uncle Petros in the 1970's through the eyes of the beloved favourite nephew as a teenager. Petros is dismissed as the family failure that supports him through the family business while he does nothing but read books and plays chess.He leaves his home only once a month to do the books of a charity founded by his father. The beloved favourite nephew is met by a wall of adult silence when he tried to find out what the anger of the family is about. A chance phone call and a subsequent letter lead him to discover thatfar from a failureUncle Petros had been a professor of mathematics in the 20's and 30's at a prestigious German University. This makes him as obsessive as his Uncle as he struggles to discover the Truth of the family scandal.

He tries to become a mathematician to help him challenge and understand what had obsessed his Uncle. This causes huge family problems- this is a Greek family remember where honouring your family and Father is a top rule in life. He finally manages to get the story of his Uncles obsessive hunt out in the open but at a high personal cost to his own ambitions. It is clear that Uncle Petros is a genius who will never be known as his hopes are dashed in the 30's by the publication of Kurt Godel's Theorem. Yes more maths but not much so don't leave. This solves the problem of completeness by showing that any theory of numbers will contain unprovable propositions. Alan During (him of how do we know a computer hashuman intelligence- asked before computers were developed- now that's what being clever is about) then demonstrates that theorists have no idea which proposition is merely hard to prove and which are impossible to prove.

Hence, Uncle Petros has no way of knowing if spending all his life in trying solve the Golbach's Conjecture is a possible but hard task or impossible task. He gives up, his dreams and hopes ended. The beloved nephew is finding the truth is released from his obsession and so escapes the fate of his Uncle but then realises that a psychological lie has taken place which he needs to lance but this has tragic consequences.

Uncle Petros and Golbach's Conjecture is highly recommended Greek tragedy in less then 200 pages about theoretical maths and why love and life isabout how you answer the Bette Davis Theorem:

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

A very good read.
Congratulations to my Greek compatriot for a very good read. The translation is very good, too. An interesting story of an interesting man, uncle Petros; a story that can easily be followed, even if one (as myself), does not posses a degree or a
big interest in mathematics. The story makes you think about what is truly important in life, and how one can easily get engulfed chasing a life's dream.
I am surprised, yet happy, however, that Doxiadis has been translated in English, when so many other contemporary Greek writers have not yet been translated. I sincerely hope that many more worthy authors from such a small in population country, that can boast two Nobel prizes in literature (i.e. Elytis and Seferis), will soon be translated in English.

P.S. Congratulations to Amazon for coming to Canada and giving the locals some competition... ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Goldbach's Conjecture, Continuum Hypothesis, Consistency, Diophantine Set, Hilbert's Third Problem, Hilbert's Tenth Problem, Hilbert's Second Problem, Hilbert's Fifth Problem, Hilbert's First Problem, Riemann Hypothesis, Kepler Conjecture, Hilbert's Program, Hilbert's Sixteenth Problem, Hilbert's Twenty-First Problem, Hilbert's Twelfth Problem, Hilbert's Fourteenth Problem, Hilbert's Seventeenth Problem, Hilbert's Sixth Problem, Hilbert's Thirteenth Problem, Hilbert's Eighteenth Problem, Hilbert Number, Hilbert's Seventh Problem, Hilbert's Ninth Problem, Hilbert's Nineteenth Problem, Zetagrid, Hilbert's Eleventh Problem, Hilbert's Fourth Problem, Hilbert's Eighth Problem, Hilbert's Fifteenth Problem, Hilbert's Twentieth Problem, Hilbert's Twenty-Second Problem, Hilbert's Twenty-Third Problem. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 155. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis, proposed by Bernhard Riemann (1859), is a conjecture about the distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta-function which states that all non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have real part 1/2. The name is also used for some closely related analogues, such as the Riemann hypothesis for curves over finite fields. The Riemann hypothesis implies results about the distribution of prime numbers that are in some ways as good as possible. Along with suitable generalizations, it is considered by some mathematicians to be the most important unresolved problem in pure mathematics (Bombieri 2000). The Riemann zeta-function (s) is defined for all complex numbers s 1. It has zeros at the negative even integers (i.e. at s = 2, 4, 6, ...). These are called the trivial zeros. The Riemann hypothesis is concerned with the non-trivial zeros, and states that: The real part of any...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=19344125 ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Goldbach's Conjecture, Twin Prime Conjecture, Goldbach's Weak Conjecture, Schinzel's Hypothesis H, Landau's Problems, Mersenne Conjectures, Artin's Conjecture on Primitive Roots, Pólya Conjecture, Polignac's Conjecture, Cramér's Conjecture, Gilbreath's Conjecture, Chinese Hypothesis, Andrica's Conjecture, Elliott-halberstam Conjecture, Second Hardy-littlewood Conjecture, Bateman-Horn Conjecture, Bunyakovsky Conjecture, Agoh-giuga Conjecture, Lemoine's Conjecture, Legendre's Conjecture, Legendre's Constant, Redmond-sun Conjecture, Brocard's Conjecture, Waring's Prime Number Conjecture, Grimm's Conjecture, First Hardy-Littlewood Conjecture. Excerpt:In number theory the Agoh Giuga conjecture on the Bernoulli numbers B k postulates that p is a prime number if and only if The conjecture as stated is due to Takashi Agoh (1990); an equivalent formulation is due to Giuseppe Giuga, from 1950, to the effect that p is prime iff which may also be written as It is trivial to show that p being prime is sufficient for the second equivalence to hold, since if p is prime, Fermat's little theorem states that for , and the equivalence follows, since The statement is still a conjecture since it has not yet been proven that if a number n is not prime (that is, n is composite ), then the formula does not hold. It has been shown that a composite number n satisfies the formula iff it is both a Carmichael number and a Giuga number , and that if such a number exists, it has at least 13,800 digits (Borwein, Borwein, Borwein, Girgensohn 1996). The Agoh-Giuga conjecture bears a similarity to Wilson's theorem , which has been proven to be true. Wilson's theorem states that a number p is prime iff which may also be written as or, for odd prime p and, for even prime p=2 So, the truth of the Agoh-Giuga conjec... ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 567 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture.(Review)
Author: Minas Savvas
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 3Page: 684

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Goldbach's Conjecture, Prime Number Theorem, Elliptic Curve, Elliptic Function, Brun's Constant, Goldbach's Weak Conjecture, de Bruijn-Newman Constant, Seventeen or Bust, Stirling's Approximation, Riemann Hypothesis, Modular Form, Transcendence Theory, Prime-Counting Function, Modular Group, Kloosterman Sum, Eisenstein Series, Hardy-littlewood Circle Method, Lindelöf Hypothesis, Apéry's Constant, Chebotarev's Density Theorem, Classical Modular Curve, Smooth Number, Exponential Sum, Dickman-De Bruijn Function, Abstract Analytic Number Theory, Schinzel's Hypothesis H, Linnik's Theorem, on the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude, Effective Results in Number Theory, Real Analytic Eisenstein Series, Bombieri Norm, Character Sum, Artin's Conjecture on Primitive Roots, Lambert Series, Cramér's Conjecture, Gilbreath's Conjecture, Multiplicative Number Theory, Degen's Eight-Square Identity, Montgomery's Pair Correlation Conjecture, Euler's Four-Square Identity, Chen's Theorem, Green-tao Theorem, Mahler Measure, Landau Prime Ideal Theorem, Riesel Number, Elliott-halberstam Conjecture, Dirichlet Density, Second Hardy-littlewood Conjecture, Bombieri-vinogradov Theorem, Kuznetsov Trace Formula, Constant Problem, Fermat Polygonal Number Theorem, Bateman-Horn Conjecture, Perron's Formula, Kronecker Limit Formula, Maier's Theorem, Birch's Theorem, Brauer-siegel Theorem, Siegel-walfisz Theorem, Hardy-ramanujan Theorem, Brun-titchmarsh Theorem, Friedlander-iwaniec Theorem, the Music of the Primes, Vaughan's Identity, Landau-ramanujan Constant, Petersson Trace Formula, Hua's Lemma, Artin Conjecture, Riemann-von Mangoldt Formula, Pólya-Vinogradov Inequality. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 303. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis, proposed by B...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=19344125 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Goldbach's conjecture, Waring's problem, Goldbach's weak conjecture, Polite number, Schnirelmann density, Lagrange's four-square theorem, Arithmetic combinatorics, 15 and 290 theorems, Fermat polygonal number theorem, Lemoine's conjecture, Friedlander-Iwaniec theorem, Cameron-Erdős conjecture, Pollock octahedral numbers conjecture, Landau-Ramanujan constant, Waring's prime number conjecture,. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 60. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest unsolved problems in number theory and in all of mathematics. It states: Every even integer greater than 2 is a Goldbach number, a number that can be expressed as the sum of two primes. The number of ways an even number can be represented as the sum of two primesExpressing a given even number as a sum of two primes is called a Goldbach partition of the number. For example, On 7 June, 1742, the German mathematician Christian Goldbach of originally Brandenburg-Prussia wrote a letter to Leonhard Euler (letter XLIII) in which he proposed the following conjecture: Every integer which can be written as the sum of two primes, can also be written as the sum of as many primes as one wishes, until all terms are units.He then proposed a second conjecture in the margin of his letter: Every integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of three primes.He considered 1 to be a prime number, a convention subsequently abandoned. The two conjectures are now known to be equivalent, but this didn't seem to be an issue at the time. A modern version of Goldbach's marginal conjecture is: Every integer greater than 5 can be written as the sum of three primes.Euler replied in a letter dated 30 June, 1742, and reminded Goldbach of an earlier conversation they had ("...so Ew vormals mit mir commun...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=44758 ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Conjecture de Poincaré, Conjecture de Goldbach, Hypothèse de Riemann Généralisée, Conjecture de Syracuse, Conjecture de Géométrisation, Problèmes de Hilbert, Monstrous Moonshine, Conjecture de Birch et Swinnerton-Dyer, Programme de Langlands, Liste Des Conjectures Mathématiques, Conjecture de Hilbert-Pólya, Hypothèse H de Schinzel, Problèmes Du Prix Du Millénaire, Conjecture de Satō-Tate, Conjecture D'artin Sur Les Racines Primitives, Conjecture Abc, Conjecture Faible de Goldbach, Théorème de Lindemann-Weierstrass, Conjecture D'artin Sur Les Fonctions L, Conjecture de Elliott-Halberstam, Conjecture de Bateman-Horn, Conjecture de Kepler, Conjecture D'erdős-Burr, Conjecture de Dubner, Conjecture de Vandiver, Nouvelle Conjecture de Mersenne, Conjecture de Legendre, Conjecture D'erdős Sur Les Progressions Arithmétiques, Conjecture de Bieberbach, Conjecture de Gilbreath, Conjecture D'hadwiger, Conjecture de de Polignac, Problèmes de Landau, Conjecture D'agoh-Giuga, Conjecture de Scholz, Seconde Conjecture de Hardy-Littlewood, Conjecture de Schanuel, Conjecture de Hodge, Conjecture de Kelvin, Conjecture D'erdős-straus, Conjecture de Cramér, Conjecture de Greenberg, Conjecture D'arnold, Conjecture de Goormaghtigh, Question Ouverte. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : En mathématiques, l'hypothèse de Riemann est une conjecture formulée en 1859 par le mathématicien allemand Bernhard Riemann. Elle dit que les zéros non triviaux de la fonction zêta de Riemann ont tous pour partie réelle 1/2. Sa démonstration améliorerait la connaissance de la répartition des nombres premiers. Cette conjecture constitue l'un des problèmes non résolus les plus importants des mathématiques du début du siècle : elle est l'un des f...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Nombre Premier de Mersenne, Nombre de Fermat, Théorème Des Nombres Premiers, Crible D'ératosthène, Conjecture de Goldbach, 7, 5, 2, 17, Table Des Facteurs Premiers, 11, Liste de Nombres Premiers, Nombre Pseudopremier, Formules Pour Les Nombres Premiers, 13, Nombres Premiers Jumeaux, Répunit, 23, Spirale D'ulam, Nombre Premier « Illégal », Théorème de Green-Tao, Nombres Premiers Sexy, 19, Nombre Premier de Pierpont, 37, Nombre de Wieferich, Paire de Ruth-Aaron, 47, Nombre Premier Probable, Nombres Premiers Cousins, Nombre Premier Régulier, Nombre Premier de Ramanujan, 31, Nombre Premier Sûr, 41, 101, 83, Crible de Sundaram, Nombre Premier Palindrome, 89, Nombre Premier de Sophie Germain, 29, 239, Quadruplet de Nombres Premiers, Nombre Pseudopremier D'euler, Nombre Premier de Stern, 43, 97, Nombre de Wagstaff, Nombre Premier Unique, Nombre Premier de Chen, 73, Constellation de Nombres Premiers, 53, 79, 61, Chaîne de Cunningham, Conjecture de Dubner, 71, Nombre Premier Long, Nombre Pseudopremier de Fibonacci, Spirale de Sacks, 127, 59, Nombre Premier Super-Singulier, 137, Nombre Premier Cubain, Nombre Premier Équilibré, Nombre Chanceux D'euler, Conjecture de Legendre, 67, Nombre de Wall-Sun-Sun, Nombre de Newman-Shanks-Williams, 107, 179, 199, Reimerp, 113, 229, Nombre Premier Chanceux, 131, Nombre de Wilson, 197, Conjecture de Gilbreath, 163, 223, 109, 181, 173, 151, Problèmes de Landau, Nombre Premier Permutable, 103, Nombre de Wolstenholme, Nombre Semi-Premier, 233, Nombre Premier Factoriel, 193, 227, 251, Constante de Mills, 149, 139, 313, 191, 257, 563, 167, 311, 211, 157, Nombre Premier Primoriel, Nombre Presque Premier, 241, Théorème de La Raréfaction Des Nombres Premiers, Théorème de Sophie Germain, 9973, Pages de...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Conjecture de Goldbach, Axiomes de Peano, Table Des Bases, Partition D'un Entier, Tétration, Algorithme de Décalage N-Racines, Arbre de Stern-Brocot, Pyramide de 11, Suite de Farey, Signe, Théorème de Goodstein, Carré Parfait, Arithmétique Des Intervalles, Théorème de Midy, Hypothèse H de Schinzel, Pentation, Théorème de Beatty, Arithmétique Non-Standard, Formule D'inversion de Möbius, Conjecture Faible de Goldbach, Primorielle, Précision Arithmétique, Polynôme à Valeurs Entières, Conjecture de Dubner, Arithmétique de Presburger, Unité, Conjecture de Scholz, Equation Modulaire, Théorème de Chen, Arithmétique de Robinson. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Cet article contient une table de bases. Note : Ce qui suit s'applique seulement pour les systèmes à notation positionnelle. En Occident, la plupart des gens ont appris à compter en base 10 avec les chiffres 0, 1, 2..., 9. Cependant, il existe d'autres systèmes de numération, les plus connus étant les systèmes binaire (0, 1) et hexadécimal (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F). Il existe un algorithme qui permet de passer du système décimal à un autre. 1. Faire la division entière du nombre N par 10, noter le reste R 2. Si le dividende D vaut zéro, aller à l'étape 5. 3. Le dividende D devient le nombre N. 4. Aller à l'étape 1. 5. La suite des restes R, du dernier au premier, sont les chiffres du nombre recherché. Supposons que l'on souhaite convertir le nombre 100010 en base 16. Il suffit d'appliquer l'algorithme. 1000 ... Read more