Lewis Carroll in Numberland His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life

by Wilson, Robin

• ISBN13: 9780393304527
• ISBN10: 0393304523
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-14
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Just when we thought we knew everything about Lewis Carroll, here comes this 'œinsightful . . . 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.

Author Biography

Robin Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Pure Mathematics at the Open University, Emeritus Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London (the oldest mathematics chair in England), and a former Fellow in Mathematics at Keble College, Oxford University. He has written and edited almost forty books ranging from mathematics to music, including the critically acclaimed Four Color Suffice: How the Map Problem was Solved, and is very involved with the communication and popularization of mathematics. He lives in Oxford.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Chronology of Events	p. ix
Introduction: From Gryphons to Gravity	p. 1
The Mock Turtle's Education
Humpty Dumpty's Cravat
Alice's Examination
What's in a Name?
The Beaver's Lesson
Map-making
Fortunatus's Purse
A Question of Gravity
The Children of the North	p. 21
Daresbury
Croft
Richmond
Rugby
Marking Time
Uppe toe mine Eyes yn Worke	p. 39
An Oxford Undergraduate
A Trio of Examinations: Responsions, Moderations, Finals
Successes and Failures	p. 53
The Senior Scholarship
College Teaching
A New-Appointment
A Spot of Schoolteaching
Dodgson as a Teacher
Poems and Photographs
Ciphers
...in the Second Book of Euclid	p. 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
Send Me the Next Book...	p. 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
Meat-safes, Majorities and Memory	p. 129
College Life
Voting in Elections
Memoria Technica
Endings and Beginnings
Lawn Tennis Tournaments
Parliamentary Representation
Puzzles, Problems and Paradoxes	p. 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
That's Logic	p. 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	p. 199
Pillow-Problems
Sums of Squares
Number-guessing
Divisibility
Right-angled Triangles
Epilogue
Notes and References	p. 210
Acknowledgements and Picture Credits	p. 231
Index	p. 233
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.