“Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here,” was the inscription that Plato had inscribed above the Athens Academy. From Antiquity to the present, mathematics remains a fundamental subject for anyone wishing to understand the nature of things.

But is it possible to penetrate the mathematical world without undertaking long, difficult studies? The author argues that it is — at least to a certain point. What matters is not so much a thorough mastery of mathematical skills as an understanding of how the human mind — and particularly the mathematician's mind — takes in mathematical reality.

This accessible approach to mathematics (and to mathematicians) will interest experts and non-experts alike.

Each chapter examines an important mathematical idea and the visionary minds behind it (Newton, Gödel, Turing, Bourbaki, etc.).

This entertaining and impertinent book is a fascinating journey into the world of mathematics.

David Ruelle, the celebrated author of Chance and Chaos, is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor of theoretical physics at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, in Bures-en-Yvette, France. He is internationally renowned for his work on fluid mechanics and chaos theory.