David Singmaster

Thinking Big

The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless

By

Jonathan Cape 328pp £17.99 order from our bookshop

Infinity is an awfully big subject, as Peter Pan might have said. Indeed there is not just one infinity, but infinitely many of them. Grappling with infinity is one of the main themes of mathematics, physics, astronomy, religion, and philosophy. ‘The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man,’ said the German mathematician David Hilbert. It has even driven men mad.

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