Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality

A “New York Times” Science Bestseller

What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren t even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry.
In “Love and Math,” renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we ve never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.

“Love and Math” tells two intertwined stories: of the wonders of mathematics and of one young man s journey learning and living it. Having braved a discriminatory educational system to become one of the twenty-first century s leading mathematicians, Frenkel now works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of math in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. Considered by many to be a Grand Unified Theory of mathematics, the Langlands Program enables researchers to translate findings from one field to another so that they can solve problems, such as Fermat s last theorem, that had seemed intractable before.

At its core, “Love and Math” is a story about accessing a new way of thinking, which can enrich our lives and empower us to better understand the world and our place in it. It is an invitation to discover the magic hidden universe of mathematics.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 A Mysterious Beast
Chapter 2 The Essence of Symmetry
Chapter 3 The Fifth Problem
Chapter 4 Kerosinka
Chapter 5 Threads of the Solution
Chapter 6 Apprentice Mathematician
Chapter 7 The Grand Unified Theory
Chapter 8 Magic Numbers
Chapter 9 Rosetta Stone
Chapter 10 Being in the Loop
Chapter 11 Conquering the Summit
Chapter 12 Tree of Knowledge
Chapter 13 Harvard Calling
Chapter 14 Tying the Sheaves of Wisdom
Chapter 15 A Delicate Dance
Chapter 16 Quantum Duality
Chapter 17 Uncovering Hidden Connections
Chapter 18 Searching for the Formula of Love