MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Der Rechenmeister [aka The Mathematician] (1999)
Dieter Jörgensen
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Contributed by Bernd Schulze

When I browsed through your list I found one book missing that I have in my library: "Der Rechenmeister" by Dieter Jörgensen is a novel describing the life of Niccolo Tartaglia in Venice and his battle with Girolamo Cardano about the solution of the cubic equation. There is no formula in the text but a good description of what the problem is and how it was solved.

The book appeared 1999 as hardcover, my paperback edition is from 2001 and has ISBN 3-7466-1704-9. A short lookup at amazon shows that there is a a french edition that seems to be still in print ("Le Maitre des nombres", 2859498282), but the english editions (0060185333 or 0060933437 - note that the author is written here as "Jorgensen" and not with an umlaut) seem to be out of print.

Please continue your work with that list - I hope I will find a lot of interesting stuff to read!

More information about this work can be found at www.amazon.com.
(Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage.)

Works Similar to Der Rechenmeister [aka The Mathematician]
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. The French Mathematician by Tom Petsinis
  2. Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
  3. The Ishango Bone by Paul Hastings Wilson
  4. Continuums by Robert Carr
  5. The Sand-Reckoner by Gillian Bradshaw
  6. Flowers Stained with Moonlight by Catherine Shaw
  7. Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis
  8. D'Alembert's Principle: A Novel in Three Panels by Andrew Crumey
  9. The Cambridge Quintet by John L. Casti
  10. The Fibonacci Confessions by Graham Wade
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Categories:
GenreHistorical Fiction,
MotifReal Mathematicians,
TopicAlgebra/Arithmetic/Number Theory, Real Mathematics,
MediumNovels,

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Where are the new works of mathematical fiction?: As you can see from this chronological listing, this database includes many works of mathematical fiction for each year from 1990 to 2025. Strangely, only two are listed for 2026, so far. Either less mathematical fiction is being published than in previous years or I'm just having more trouble finding it. If you know of any works of fiction that should be added to this list, especially recently published ones, please let me know. (Keep in mind that I do not include self-published works or children's fiction that just covers elementary mathematical concepts.) Thanks!

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)