December 1, 2013

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Book Review: Beautiful Geometry

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By Lee Billings

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Beautiful Geometry
by Eli Maor and Eugen Jost
Princeton University Press, 2014

Mathematicians sometimes compare well-constructed equations to works of art. To them, patterns in numbers hold a beauty at least equal to that found in any sonnet or sculpture. In this book, Maor, a math historian, teams with Jost, an artist, to reveal some of that mathematical majesty using jewel-like visualizations of classic geometric theorems. Often the pictures are actually puzzles to be solved, containing clues for perceptive readers to follow. Mixing equal parts math, history and philosophy, the authors begin with some basics—the Pythagorean theorem, the golden ratio, Fibonacci numbers, and so on—before expanding to introduce more baroque and contemporary theorems. The result is a book that stimulates the mind as well as the eye.

Lee Billings is a science journalist specializing in astronomy, physics, planetary science, and spaceflight and is senior desk editor for physical science at Scientific American. He is author of a critically acclaimed book, Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, which in 2014 won a Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. In addition to his work for Scientific American, Billings’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Science and many other publications. Billings joined Scientific American in 2014 and previously worked as a staff editor at SEED magazine. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

More by Lee Billings
Scientific American Magazine Vol 309 Issue 6This article was published with the title “Beautiful Geometry” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 309 No. 6 (), p. 80
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1213-80c
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