Robin Wilson is the author and editor of more than thirty books, including Four Colors Suffice and Lewis Carroll in Wonderland. He is a professor of pure mathematics at the Open University, and a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford University. He lives in London.
Wilson shows that Dodgson turned the most sober of problems into child's play.--Jascha Hoffmann "Nature"
British mathematician Wilson (Four Colors Suffice) paints a charming picture of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, in this slender biography. Skipping over the most chronicled aspects of Dodgson's life with only a sharp side note deriding rumors of his pedophilia as "bad history and bad psychology," Wilson focuses on Dodgson's mathematical and educational accomplishments: pamphlets and books on Euclid, an efficient way of calculating determinants, astute analysis of election methods, and systems of mnemonics and ciphers. Wilson also includes puzzles (some with unsatisfying solutions); a number of Dodgson's photographs, for which Wilson labels him "one of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century"; and humorous and satirical letters suggesting political postulates such as, "Let it be granted, that a speaker may digress from any one point to any other point." Though Dodgson was apparently not always a brilliant teacher or writer in his field, Wilson chooses some of his best work for the examples, and any fan of Victorian mind-benders or mid-level mathematics will enjoy the Dodo's witty and eager explanations of logical puzzles and games. 100 illus. (Nov.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Wilson shows that Dodgson turned the most sober of problems into child's play.--Jascha Hoffmann "Nature"
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