Reviews of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
by Apostolos Doxiadis
From
Kirkus Reviews
An intellectual thriller that manages to convey the high drama and
excitement involved in the pursuit of an answer to a mysterious . . . mathematical
theorem. Eccentric uncles are usually better loved than conventional ones,
for some reason, and the narrators uncle Petros Papachristos is about as
loopy as they come. Apparently unemployed and rumored to be insane, Uncle
Petros lives alone in the countryside and seems to do nothing other than
read and play chess. The eldest of the three Papachristos brothers, he
grew up in comfort as the son of a successful Athens businessman and was
sent for his early education to a fashionable French Jesuit school, where
his gift for mathematics was so prodigious that his teachers had to concede
their teenaged charge knew more than they. He was then dispatched to Berlin
for higher studies, and eventually was on the faculty of the University
of Munich. There Uncle Petros became intrigued by Goldbach's Conjecture which
speculates that every even number greater than two may be expressed as
the sum of two prime numbers and sets himself to the task of proving it.
By the time he comes to the conclusion that the conjecture is unprovable,
he's spent so many years on the effort that his career has been wasted.
What effect does his example have on his nephew? Why, naturally it inspires
him to become a mathematician and prove the conjecture himself! Some people
never learn. Neither do some families. And some end up learning very different
things than they set out to discover, as Uncle Petros found out about mathematics
and his nephew found out about Uncle Petros himself. Delightful fun, well-conceived
and nicely executed. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP.
All rights reserved.
Oliver
Sacks
A mathematical conjecture unsolved for two centuries; a mathematical
genius uncle driven mad trying to solve it; an ambiguous relation with
a mathematically-minded nephew; and acute human observation all come together
in Uncle Petros to make a very funny, tender, charming and, to my mind,
irresistible novel.
Book
Description
In the tradition of Fermat's Last Theorem and Einstein's Dreams, a
novel about mathematical obsession.
Petros Papachristos devotes the early part of his life trying
to prove one of the greatest mathematical challenges of all time: Goldbach's
Conjecture, the deceptively simple claim that every even number greater
than two is the sum of two primes. Against a tableau of famous historical
figures--among them G.H. Hardy, the self-taught Indian genius Srinivasa
Ramanujan, and a young Kurt Godel--Petros works furiously to prove the
notoriously difficult conjecture, but suddenly disappears into a solitary
existence playing chess in the Greek countryside.
To his nephew, he is known as the solitary, eccentric Uncle Petros,
but when the young man finds out that his uncle is an esteemed professor
of mathematics, he searches out his uncle's hidden past. Through an adversarial
friendship based on chess and mathematics, he drives the retired mathematician
back into the hunt to prove Goldbach's Conjecture... but at the cost of
the old man's sanity, and perhaps even his life.
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is an intellectual adventure,
a story of proud genius and the exhilaration of pure mathematics. It is
about the search for truth at all costs, and the heavy price of finding
it.
From
the Publisher
"A mathematical conjecture unsolved for two centuries; a mathematical
genius uncle driven mad trying to solve it; an ambiguous relation with
a mathematically-minded nephew; and acute human observation all come together
in Uncle Petros to make a very funny, tender, charming and, to my mind,
irresistible novel."--Oliver Sacks, M.D.
"Paints a fascinating picture of how a mathematician could fall into
a mental trap by devoting his efforts to a too difficult problem."--John
Nash, Nobel Laureate, 1994, subject of A Beautiful Mind
"It is brilliantly written-a mathematical detective story of great charm-and
it certainly succeeds in capturing much of the spirit of mathematical research."--Sir
Michael Atiyah, winner of the Fields Medal and world-renowned mathematician
About
the Author
Apostolos Doxiadis received a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics from
Columbia University and a Master's Degree in Applied Mathematics from the
École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He has run a number of successful
computer companies, as well as written and directed for screen and stage.
The second of his two feature films, Tetriem, won the prize of the International
Center for Artistic Cinema at the 1988 Berlin International Film Festival.
Doxiadis lives in Athens, Greece.
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