Mathematics

I grew up in a house on the campus of a boarding school in Connecticut. My father taught history and coached the wrestling team, while my mother taught art. Our lives were totally immersed in this insular academic world—the school was our home and our playground.

Euclid of Alexandria: mathematician, author of the Elements of Geometry. Utterer of apocryphal quips including the famous put-down to Ptolemy I: ‘there is no royal road to geometry’. Who was he? What did he look like?

Many people have tried to define logic. James Thurber wrote, “Since it is possible to touch a clock without stopping it, it follows that one can start a clock without touching it.”

While completing this piece, the world came together in shared sadness, pain, and grief. This time has been an awakening for some and a reminder for others of the injustice all around us and its long and ugly legacy.

In the era of big data, it is easy to imagine that we have all the information we need to make good decisions. But in fact the data we have are never complete, and may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Tales of Impossibility recounts the intriguing story of the so-called ‘problems of antiquity,’ four of the most famous and studied questions in the history of mathematics.