Happy 2025! This is a special year, because — mathematically speaking — it is a year when you and I are alive, a year when lifeless matter has coalesced into living bodies on the wet skin of a rocky sphere in a vibrant corner of an inconceivable cosmos.
Also, it’s a special year because 2025 = 452 = (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9)2 = 13 + 23 + 33 + 43 + 53 + 63 + 73 + 83 + 93.
So, good times no matter how you slice it.
Finnished
I got to go to Helsinki this month, thanks to my translator/publisher/pal/Finnisher Juha Pietiläinen.
His company Terra Cognita publishes big-time science books by big-name authors on socially urgent topics, so that Finnish readers can join the global conversation in their native tongue. So, yes, my stick-figure jokes are a perfect fit. No further questions please.
Additional thanks to Rosebud Books, who hosted Juha and me in conversation on Saturday. I got to read aloud the Dr. Seuss parody from my new book, swapping verses with Juha’s Finnish version, so the audience could hear how he handled the impossible task.
(Juha got applause. I did not. This is fair.)
Signed Copies
This month, while making my rounds of the local bookstores, I took a few moments to sign the available copies of my books.
Sorry, did I use the first-person singular there? Bad habit. My daughters did most of the signing.
Autographed versions of Math for English Majors are now in abundant supply at Next Chapter.
Going Dutch
To my honor, the first pages from Math for English Majors (originally published at Lit Hub) were translated into Dutch and printed in Belgium’s paper of record, De Standaard.
At the editor’s invitation, I added a few paragraphs, which I offer in English here:
We all know the stereotype: there are math people, and “not math” people. The separation begins early in childhood. By adulthood, the two belong to wholly separate intellectual traditions—which might as well be different species, evolved on different planets, with no common language except for disapproving noises and warlike glares.
Why, then, has the union of math and literature been so fruitful?
One possibility is that the two are complements. Like sweet and salty, math and literature are opposite flavors that pair well together. “The union of the mathematician with the poet,” said William James, “fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.” Perhaps math’s clarity and coolness is the perfect balance for poetry’s intensity and heat.
Another possibility—the one I tend to favor—is just the opposite: that math and literature are not as different as they appear. “Mathematics,” said the mathematician Oswald Veblen, “is one of the essential emanations of the human spirit, a thing to be valued in and for itself, like art or poetry.” Mathematics and literature are both expressions of human imagination.
Sofia Kovalevskaya, the first woman to receive a PhD in mathematics, put it even more sharply. “It is impossible to be a mathematician,” she said, “without being a poet in the soul.”
Math Books I Enjoyed in 2024
For a while (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021) I compiled my favorite books of the year into a post. I cannot imagine where I got the energy for such an undertaking.
Instead, I offer a quick rundown of the mathier highlights from my 2024 reading.
First, if you’re looking for literature:
The MANIAC, by Benjamin Labatut. A 20th-century monster story. The monster is John von Neumann, and the world of artificial intelligence that he helped to create. The story is narrated in the voices of those who knew him.
Luminous, by Greg Egan. Egan’s sci-fi short stories are more mathematically sophisticated than a lot of math textbooks. (And don’t worry, the literary sophistication is higher, too.) A note for Ted Chiang fans: the title story makes a fascinating pairing with Chiang’s “Division By Zero.”
Second, if you’re looking not for literature per se, but good books about it:
Once Upon a Prime, Sarah Hart. A tour of connections between literature and mathematics. One of my new favorite works of math popularization. It’s a book I long intended to write, and I’m glad Hart got there first, because she did a better job than I would have.
Much Ado About Numbers, by Rob Eastaway. Best enjoyed as a kind of trivia book, with mathematician Eastaway guiding us through Shakespeare’s language, time, and world.
Third, if you’re looking for mathematical puzzles, I’ve already sung the praises of a few books, but for even more in the same vein, consider:
Seven Games, by Oliver Roeder. Those seven games: chess, checkers, go, bridge, poker, scrabble, and backgammon. Published a few years ago, but still a good backdoor exploration of artificial intelligence, in all its powers and limitations.
The Puzzler, by A.J. Jacobs. Cheeky, breezy nonfiction about the many worlds of puzzles. Ranges from crosswords to jigsaws to Smullyan-esque logical traps. Lots of good puzzles throughout.
And finally, if you’re looking for good ol’ nonfiction:
Trefethen’s Index Cards, by Lloyd N. Trefethen. Since youth, mathematician Trefethen has kept a sort of diary in the form of index cards. This book draws a few hundred from across the decades, with frank, wistful observations on math, life, and culture.
The Emergence of Probability, by Ian Hacking. A historical tour de force that I wrote about in a recent post.
Numbers Don’t Lie, by Vaclav Smil. A clear-eyed, iron-hearted, quantitatively-driven survey of the 21st century landscape.
Parting Puzzle(s).
These six come from a New Year’s email sent by my father Jim Orlin. A renowned researcher in network flows, he is widely considered one of the most adorable of all Orlins.
2025 is a special year in that it is the square of an integer.
1. What was the last year (prior to 2025) that was a square of an integer?
2. What is the next year (after 2025) that is a square of an integer?
Also, 2025 has 15 divisors.
3. What was the last year (prior to 2025) that has 15 divisors?
4. What is the next year (after 2025) that has 15 divisors?
The following is a bit surprising, I think.
5. What was the last year (prior to 2025) that has 16 divisors?
6. What is the next year (after 2025) that has 16 divisors?
