Loren Graham is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jean-Michel Kantor is a mathematician at the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu in Paris.
The intellectual drama will attract readers who are interested in
mystical religion and the foundations of mathematics. The personal
drama will attract readers who are interested in a human tragedy
with characters who met their fates with exceptional courage.
*Freeman Dyson*
At the end of the nineteenth century, three young French
mathematicians--Émile Borel, René Baire and Henri Lebesgue--built
on the work of Georg Cantor to conceive a new theory of functions
that in a few years transformed mathematical analysis. When their
work met with skepticism, they began to doubt it and abandoned
further investigation. In Russia, under the leadership of Dmitry
Egorov, a group of Moscow mathematicians picked up the torch.
Animated by a mystical tradition known as Name Worshipping, they
found the creativity to name the new objects of the French theory
of functions. And they changed the face of the mathematical
world.
*Bernard Bru, emeritus, University of Paris V*
A passionate confluence of mathematical creation and mystical
practices is at the center of this extraordinary account of the
emergence of set theory in Russia in the early twentieth century.
The starkly drawn contrast with mathematical developments in France
illuminates the story, and the book is electric with portraits of
the great mathematicians involved: the tragic, the unfortunate, the
villainous, the truly admirable. The authors offer an account of
Infinity that is brief, deft, serious, and accessible to
non-mathematicians, and their evocation of the mathematical circles
of the period is so intimately written that one feels as if one had
lived, worked, and suffered alongside the protagonists. Graham and
Kantor have given us an amazing piece of mathematical history.
*Barry Mazur, Harvard University*
Last week I read one of the most interesting books I've encountered
so far this year, Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious
Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity, by Loren Graham and
Jean-Michel Kantor, just published by Harvard University Press.
I'll be writing more about this book, but in the meantime I wanted
to let you know about it. Many books in the science-and-religion
conversation tediously cover the same ground. This book comes from
a fresh angle--the world of mathematics and the world of "science"
are not the same, but they overlap--and it tells a fascinating
story. I found it absolutely riveting. And it's encouraging to see
two secular scholars doing their best to be scrupulously fair in
representing religious thinkers whose worldview is very different
from their own.
*Books & Culture*
It is a story of the persistence of intellectual life against the
wrecking tide of history.
*Nature*
In the early 20th century, mathematicians grappled with the concept
of infinity, relying heavily on set theory to prove and define it.
The French mathematicians, rationalists not fond of abstraction
(particularly abstractions with spiritual overtones), went
head-to-head with the Russians, who had always linked mathematics
to philosophy, religion and ideology. Name Worshipping played a key
role in bringing the two closer together. Graham and Kantor do a
beautiful job of fleshing out the key players in this gripping
drama--nothing less than a struggle to prove the existence of
God.
*Los Angeles Times*
This absorbing book tells astonishing stories about some of the
most important developments in mathematics of the past
century...Perhaps the most moving section of the book is that
dealing with the famous Moscow School of Mathematics in Soviet
times. Its origins are traced to the Lusitania seminar established
by Egorov and Luzin (the source of the name "Lusitania" is
obscure). The enthusiasm that these teachers inspired in their
students is clearly conveyed, as is the atmosphere of intellectual
excitement, despite the freezing lecture rooms (the rule that
lectures could not take place if the room temperature fell below
-5C was ignored)...This is a remarkable book, illuminating the
history of 20th-century mathematics and its practitioners. The
stories it tells are important and too little known. It is clearly
a labor of love and deserves a wide audience: it is an outstanding
portrayal of mathematics as a fundamentally human activity and
mathematicians as human beings.
*Times Higher Education*
The most unusual book I have read this year.
*Boston Globe*
Fifty years ago, C. P. Snow gave a soon-to-be famous lecture on the
"Two Cultures" of modern society, the culture of the humanities and
the culture of science, and the need to bridge the gap between
them. Today we are more likely to hear debates about the alleged
gulf between science and religion. Both divides are bridged in this
superb book, which takes us from French rationalism at the turn of
the 20th century to a thriving center of world-class mathematics in
Moscow, where the presiding figures were also devout Russian
Orthodox believers of a mystical bent.
*Christianity Today*
Naming Infinity is a short, accessible book about mathematical
imagination...Naming Infinity is a straightforward, kinetic, and
seductive read...In describing the life trajectories of their
subjects, the authors are unafraid to take sides, show their
sympathies, even judge. There is something refreshingly honest in
their striving to be fair to their real-life characters without
feigned impartiality. This considered generosity and the passion
that shows itself in the copious quantities of documentary and
anecdotal evidence gathered by Loren Graham in Russia, make the
book a fascinating read...Just as a stimulating conversation, even
when left incomplete, opens the mind to new ideas, Naming Infinity
suggests new ways of thinking about mathematical creativity and
intellectual excellence.
*theworld.org*
This is not only a readable book, but a most worthwhile one,
insofar as it offers a series of anecdotal life-stories of
remarkable people, little known save to specialists, together with
valuable insights into the Soviet Union of the 1930s.
*Times Literary Supplement*
As Naming Infinity so sensitively shows, escaping the world we live
in, and the exacting parameters of reason, can sometimes lead to
surprising results. As powerful as the gift of rationalism may be,
there is still more in heaven and earth.
*New Republic*
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