David Darling - Weirdest Maths

We began writing our first book together when one of us was a 61-year-old science writer and the other a 15-year-old schoolboy. It seemed an unlikely combination but Agnijo was no ordinary teenager. His father, whod heard that I (David) do some tutoring in maths and science, asked if Id be available to work with Agnijo to help develop his wider knowledge of maths, modern physics, and areas where science and philosophy overlap. His school was running out of things to teach him and he was taking exams four years ahead of his age group (nearly always scoring full marks).

From the outset, it was clear that Agnijo had outstanding abilities. He could perform extraordinary feats of mental arithmetic and had a phenomenal memory. The first time he came to me I lent him a copy of a book Id written about ten years before called The Universal Encyclopedia of Mathematics , a fairly dense 400-page A-to-Z of everything under the mathematical sun. A week later he brought the book back not only had he read it and memorised large chunks but hed also found several minor mistakes! From then on, our sessions werent so much conventional tutorials as they were conversations at a graduate level, on everything from the nature of dark energy to ways of naming numbers vast beyond imagination.

At some point in 2015 I suggested to Agnijo that we write a book together, dividing up the chapters according to our special interests and cross-checking each others work. Fortunately, my publisher, Oneworld, saw the merit in our unusual partnership. Our proposal was accepted and the start of 2018 saw the fruits of our collaboration Weird Maths appear in print.

If any seventeen-year-old mathematicians have had a bigger year than Agnijo did in 2018, they must be few and far between. Shortly after becoming a published author, Agnijo was selected for the UK team at the prestigious Balkan Mathematical Olympiad and then to represent Britain at the 2018 International Mathematical Olympiad. His one and only appearance at an IMO saw him take joint first place with a perfect score the best result by a UK competitor in twenty-four years. No sooner had he returned to Britain than he was on his travels again, this time to India with his family, to help promote a new edition of Weird Maths there. As if that were not enough, he had only a few weeks to recover after coming back to British soil before starting his maths degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, the alma mater of so many of his mathematical heroes, including Srinivasa Ramanujan, G. H. Hardy, and Charles Babbage.

In Weirdest Maths , the final book of the Weird Maths trilogy, we trek far and wide across the landscape of this strangest and most wonderful subject. We explore the maths of sport, life, and the universe as a whole. We ask what makes a mathematical genius and follow the adventures of Agnijo from elementary school prodigy to first place in the worlds greatest maths competition. We look at maths in fiction, examine the claim that beauty is a reliable guide to truth, and ask what mathematicians may accomplish over the decades ahead.

To many people maths may seem a dull, hard subject one of the necessary evils of school to be avoided later on as much as possible. But maths is infinitely greater than a system of calculation. It permeates everything around and within us music, art, the natural world, and the human mind forming an invisible infrastructure of reality. Mathematics, far from being dry and difficult, is vibrant and fascinating, as wonderful as it is weird.