Books like Genius at Play by Siobhan Roberts

Simon Singh traces the sweeping history of cryptography, from Mary Queen of Scots to Navajo Code Talkers and the Internet’s secure commerce, revealing how secrecy has shaped wars, nations, and technology.

xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years. In Fermat's Enigma--based on the author's award-winning documentary film, which aired on PBS's "Nova"--Simon Singh tells the astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of that grail, and the lives that were devoted to, sacrificed for, and saved by it. Here is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery that will forever change your feelings about mathematics.

A biography of the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős, detailing his restless travels, groundbreaking collaborations, and the mathematical problems that shaped his legacy.

A biography of mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., detailing his brilliance, his 31‑year battle with schizophrenia, and his eventual remission.

A biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan that traces his upbringing in India, his extraordinary mathematical achievements, and his collaboration with G. H. Hardy at Cambridge.

James Gleick’s biography examines Isaac Newton’s life through his letters, notebooks, and groundbreaking work in physics, optics, and calculus, revealing how his science reshaped our understanding of the universe.

William Poundstone examines John von Neumann’s creation of game theory, its rise at RAND during the Cold War, and its lasting impact on politics and strategy.

Ada Lovelace’s life and legacy are examined as a window on the social and scientific shifts of early nineteenth‑century Britain.

A first‑hand biography of Alan Turing written by his nephew, Dermot Turing, drawing on newly released National Archives documents, unpublished photographs, and fresh insights into Turing’s life as mathematician, codebreaker, and computer pioneer.

Alan M. Turing, a towering figure in 20th‑century mathematics and computing, whose pioneering work on Enigma and contributions to logic, artificial intelligence and computational biology reshaped modern science.

*Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays*: First edition divides the content into two volumes. Second edition is comprised of four volumes. This is the 2nd edition, volume 1.

Brilliant mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing’s life and ideas—from breaking Germany’s Enigma codes to founding theoretical computer science—are explored in this concise biography.

Behind every great man, there's a great woman; no other adage more aptly describes the relationship between Charles Babbage, the man credited with thinking up the concept of the programmable computer, and mathematician Ada Lovelace, whose contributions, according to Essinger, proved indispensable to Babbage's invention. The Analytical Engine was a series of cogwheels, gear-shafts, camshafts, and power transmission rods controlled by a punch-card system based on the Jacquard loom. Lovelace, the only legitimate child of English poet Lord Byron, wrote extensive notes about the machine, including an algorithm to compute a long sequence of Bernoulli numbers, which some observers now consider to be the world's first computer program.

This is a text on games and how to play them intelligently. In this volume, the authors examine games played in clubs, giving case studies for coin and paper-and-pencil games, such as Dots-and-Boxes and Nimstring. *Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays*: First edition divides the content into two volumes. Second edition is comprised of four volumes. This is the 1st edition, volume 1.