Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life

by Robin Wilson

Overview

“A fine mathematical biography.”—John Allen Paulos, New York Times Book Review

Just when we thought we knew everything about Lewis Carroll, here comes this “insightful . . . scholarly . . . serious” (John Butcher, American Scientist) biography that will appeal to Alice fans everywhere. Fascinated by the inner life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Robin Wilson, a Carroll scholar and a noted mathematics professor, has produced this revelatory book—filled with more than one hundred striking and often playful illustrations—that examines the many inspirations and sources for Carroll’s fantastical writings, mathematical and otherwise. As Wilson demonstrates, Carroll made significant contributions to subjects as varied as voting patterns and the design of tennis tournaments, in the process creating large numbers of imaginative recreational puzzles based on mathematical ideas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393304527
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/14/2010
Pages:	237
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Robin Wilson is the author and editor of more than thirty books, including Four Colors Suffice and Lewis Carroll in Wonderland. He is a professor of pure mathematics at the Open University, and a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford University. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Chronology of Events ix

Introduction: From Gryphons to Gravity 1

Scene 1 The Mock Turtle's Education

Scene 2 Humpty Dumpty's Cravat

Scene 3 Alice's Examination

Scene 4 What's in a Name?

Scene 5 The Beaver's Lesson

Scene 6 Map-making

Scene 7 Fortunatus's Purse

Scene 8 A Question of Gravity

Fit the 1 The Children of the North 21

Daresbury

Croft

Richmond

Rugby

Marking Time

Fit the 2 Uppe toe mine Eyes yn Worke 39

An Oxford Undergraduate

A Trio of Examinations: Responsions, Moderations, Finals

Fit the 3 Successes and Failures 53

The Senior Scholarship

College Teaching

A New-Appointment

A Spot of Schoolteaching

Dodgson as a Teacher

Poems and Photographs

Ciphers

Fit the 4 ...in the Second Book of Euclid 81

Here's Looking at Euclid

Dodgson's Pamphlets

The Dynamics of a Parti-cle

The Euclid Debate

Euclid and his Modern Rivals

Dodgson's Hexagon

Squaring the Circle

Fit the 5 Send Me the Next Book... 101

Dodgson the Deacon

More Pamphlets

Letters to Child-friends

An Algebra Lesson: The Algebraic Geometry of the Plane, Determinants, The Algebraic Geometry of Three-dimensional Space, Dodgson's 'Method of Condensation'

Dodgson's Determinants

University Whimsy

Fit the 6 Meat-safes, Majorities and Memory 129

College Life

Voting in Elections

Memoria Technica

Endings and Beginnings

Lawn Tennis Tournaments

Parliamentary Representation

Fit the 7 Puzzles, Problems and Paradoxes 149

A Tangled Tale

Carroll's Puzzles: Arithmetical Puzzles, Geometrical Puzzles, River-crossing Puzzles

Other Recreations: The Number 42, Finding the Day of the Week, Colouring Maps, The Monkey and the Weight, Every Triangle is Isosceles, A Symmetric Poem

Fit the 8 That's Logic 171

Prim Misses and Sillygisms

The Game of Logic

Symbolic Logic

Venn, Carroll and Churchill

Logic Puzzles and Paradoxes

What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

Conclusion: Math and Aftermath 199

Pillow-Problems

Sums of Squares

Number-guessing

Divisibility

Right-angled Triangles

Epilogue

Notes and References 210

Acknowledgements and Picture Credits 231

Index 233

Editorial Reviews

"Wilson shows that Dodgson turned the most sober of problems into child’s play."

Nature - Jascha Hoffmann

British mathematician Wilson (Four Colors Suffice) paints a charming picture of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, in this slender biography. Skipping over the most chronicled aspects of Dodgson's life with only a sharp side note deriding rumors of his pedophilia as "bad history and bad psychology," Wilson focuses on Dodgson's mathematical and educational accomplishments: pamphlets and books on Euclid, an efficient way of calculating determinants, astute analysis of election methods, and systems of mnemonics and ciphers. Wilson also includes puzzles (some with unsatisfying solutions); a number of Dodgson's photographs, for which Wilson labels him "one of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century"; and humorous and satirical letters suggesting political postulates such as, "Let it be granted, that a speaker may digress from any one point to any other point." Though Dodgson was apparently not always a brilliant teacher or writer in his field, Wilson chooses some of his best work for the examples, and any fan of Victorian mind-benders or mid-level mathematics will enjoy the Dodo's witty and eager explanations of logical puzzles and games. 100 illus. (Nov.)

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