Is God a Mathematician?

Bestselling author and astrophysicist Mario Livio examines the lives and theories of history’s greatest mathematicians to ask how—if mathematics is an abstract construction of the human mind—it can so perfectly explain the physical world.

Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that—mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true. Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is “a product of human thought that is independent of experience,” how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us?

Physicist and author Mario Livio brilliantly explores mathematical ideas from Pythagoras to the present day as he shows us how intriguing questions and ingenious answers have led to ever deeper insights into our world. This fascinating book will interest anyone curious about the human mind, the scientific world, and the relationship between them.

• The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number
• Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
• Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe
• The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
• Nova: The Great Math Mystery
• Why?: What Makes Us Curious
• Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith
• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
• Calculating the Cosmos: How Mathematics Unveils the Universe
• God Created The Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History