They say that mathematicians talk only to God, but this is certainly not true of Piergiorgio Odifreddi, a mathematician who not only converses with all branches of science, but is also on excellent terms with literature, art and philosophy. The illness that has been diagnosed is scientific innumeracy, the cure prescribed, 120 “pills of mathematics” of which the active ingredients are summarized in the sub-title. These “pills of mathematics” play the fields of the humanities and mathematics to show the reader, whether old, young or middle-aged, that mathematics is present – sometimes almost shyly, other times powerfully – in all aspects of culture: in those disciplines, ranging from physics to economics, where one would expect to find it, but also in less expected places, from novels to works of art. The cure does have a collateral effect, but a positive one: by the end of the book, you will know more than the contents of an encyclopaedia and you will be convinced that mathematics is superior to any other branch of science
Piergiorgio Odifreddi has studied mathematics in Italy, the United States and in the Soviet Union; he has taught Mathematical Logic at the University of Turin and the Cornell University of New York.
Romanian: Editura Humanitas
