Symmetry
by Marcus du Sautoy | 
In Pursuit of the Unknown
by Ian Stewart | 
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know
by John D. Barrow | 
The Math Gene
by Keith Devlin | 
Nature's Numbers
by Ian Stewart | 
Archimedes' Revenge
by Paul Hoffman | 
Mathematics
by Timothy Gowers |
The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved
by Mario Livio |
Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities
by Ian Stewart |
Is God a Mathematician?
by Mario Livio | 
Alex's Adventures in Numberland
by Alex Bellos | 
Asimov on Numbers
by Isaac Asimov | 
The Mathematical Tourist
by Ivars Peterson |
The Joy of x
by Steven Strogatz |
How Not to Be Wrong
by Jordan Ellenberg |
At the heart of relativity theory, quantum mechanics, string theory, and much of modern cosmology lies one concept: symmetry. In Why Beauty Is Truth, world-famous mathematician Ian Stewart narrates the history of the emergence of this remarkable area of study. Stewart introduces us to such characters as the Renaissance Italian genius, rogue, scholar, and gambler Girolamo Cardano, who stole the modern method of solving cubic equations and published it in the first important book on algebra, and the young revolutionary Evariste Galois, who refashioned the whole of mathematics and founded the field of group theory only to die in a pointless duel over a woman before his work was published. Stewart also explores the strange numerology of real mathematics, in which particular numbers have unique and unpredictable properties related to symmetry. He shows how Wilhelm Killing discovered "Lie groups" with 14, 52, 78, 133, and 248 dimensions-groups whose very existence is a profound puzzle. Finally, Stewart describes the world beyond superstrings: the "octonionic" symmetries that may explain the very existence of the universe.