Fiction, Essays and Poetry with a Mathematical Content

Suggestions will be very welcome, but I'll only list what I can verify.
email: petersen@math.oregonstate.edu

George Parker Bidder, a calculating prodigy, born in Devonshire in 1806, gave public performances. Members of the audience would frequently ask silly questions or try to make jokes at his expense. At the age of 12 he was teasingly asked at one performance how many bulls' tails were needed to reach the moon. Immediately he replied, "One, if it's long enough." A bull with a tail that long would be a lot of bull!

Essays and Fun

Howard W. Eves
The Other Side of the Equation
Prindle, Weber & Schmidt, Inc., Boston 1971

This volume is a compilation of mathematical anecdotes. Here you can learn why there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics. Whether or not you believe the story is another matter ...

Clifton Fadiman, editor
Fantasia Mathematica
Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958

An eclectic collection of stories, poems, songs, and oddments with some mathematical content.

Lillian R. Lieber and Hugh Gray Lieber
The Education of T.C. Mits
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1942, 1944

T.C. Mits is "The Celebrated Man In The Street", so by modern standards the title is unduly sexist. The book consists of illustrations and free verse, not intended to be free verse. It is surprisingly mathematical and quite wonderful in a kooky sort of way.

R. L. Weber, compiler and E. Mendoza, editor
A Random Walk in Science
The Institute of Physics, London and Bristol and Crane, Russak & Co. Inc., New York 1973

The selections in this book mostly deal with physics and engineering but it includes the classical mathematical spoofs "On the nature of mathematical proofs" and "A contribution to the mathematical theory of big game hunting".

Essays and History

Petr Beckmann
A History of Pi
Dorset Press, New York 1989, The Golem Press 1971

Some history of pi, some anecdotes and some mathematics without "epsilonics". An entertaining and instructive book.

William Dunham
Journey through Genius. The Great Theorems of Mathematics
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, 1990

This nice book is a theorem museum. Dunham has selected a number of theorems subject to the constraints that they be important, but also comprehensible to a reader of little mathematical background. The theorems presented in this book are accompanied by general historical and biographical development which adds to the pleasure of reading it, but the greatest pleasure is derived from the interesting results presented, and to no small extent from the fact that Dunham is a fine expositor.

I can not  resist quoting one pun. When describing Euler's refutation of Fermat's claim that  2^32+1  is prime, Dunham comments that Euler used the little Fermat theorem to make the calculations manageable by hand, and then goes on to say, "in the right hands, a little Fermat goes a long way."

G. H. Hardy
A Mathematician's Apology
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1940, 1967

This book is a personal account of what mathematics was to Hardy. The foreword by C. P. Snow gives us some insight into the character of Hardy.

Constance Reid
Hilbert
Springer-Verlag 1970, Copernicus (Springer-Verlag) 1996

An outstanding non-technical life of David Hilbert.

Fiction

Margaret Ball
Mathemagics, A Chicks in Chainmail Novel
Baen Publ. Enterprises, Riverdale, New York, 1996

The story is weak and some of the jokes are a bit flat, but there is still fun to be had from this book's kooky view of mathematical statements as magical incantations. Some readers may even be sympathetic to this viewpoint. My favorite quote is "Takes a lot out of you, these Furry R transforms."

Homer C. Nearing, Jr.
The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom
Modern Literary Editions Publishing Company, New York
by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954

A collection of amusing short stories. Some of the stories appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the early 1950's. The stories deal with the offbeat researches of Professor Cleanth Penn Ransom of the Mathematics Department at some university.

Rudy Rucker, editor
Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder
Arbor House Publishing Company, 1987

Twenty mathematical science fiction stories from 1947 to 1987.

Technical History

"Nicolas Bourbaki"
Elements of the History of Mathematics
Springer-Verlag, 1994

This edition is a translation of the 1984 French edition. It is a compilation of the historical notes from various volumes of Bourbaki's Elements and therefore omits developments corresponding to topics which have not yet been published in the Elements. This history deals solely with the evolution of mathematical ideas and contains almost no personal information concerning the individuals involved.

Morris Kline
Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
Oxford University Press, 1972

An excellent technical history of mathematics. This book does not end with the 19th century! Many important developments from the first part of the 20th century are included.