Pythagorean Crimes [Kindle Edition]

Tefcros Michaelides (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Stefanos Kantartzis is found dead in his home in Athens in 1929 , his closest friend, mathematician Michael Igerinos, becomes the obvious and only suspect in his murder. The dead man had had an affair with Igerinos's ex-wife, and, more recently, had begun a relationship with Igerinos's former mistress. Told mostly in flashbacks, Michaelides's less-than-gripping mystery debut begins with Igerinos's first encounter with Kantartzis at the Second International Congress of Mathematicians, held in Paris in 1900. Since the sleuthing is secondary to the author's efforts to engage the reader in the intricacies and disputations of higher mathematics, the book's appeal will be largely limited to hardcore math fans. (Sept.)
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Review

"Pythagorean Crimes is a thriller of the mind. It's the thinking-person's answer to the Da Vinci Code. This novel gives a glimpse into the intellectually-charged atmosphere of early 20th century Europe. You're drawn into the characters' devotion to their work, and you wish you were sitting at the next table at the cafe, overhearing their conversations. Not content to just explore the personalities behind the intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries, this novel makes the scholars' mathematical work as compelling as any of the characters.

Few people associate mathematics and the sciences with the bustling social scene led by Picasso and his colleagues. Tefcros Michaelides breaks the stereotypes about mathematicians and their work as he spins a compelling tale about the greatest minds of 100 years ago and their passions for their work. This novel gives us a glimpse of what it was like to be an eager, young, and up-and-coming scholar during a time where intellectual pursuits were ripe for the picking. Pythagorean Crimes shares what it's like to have a single-minded focus on a mathematical problem. This novel transports the reader (even one with no mathematical background) into a world where the pursuit of mathematical truth is an all-consuming force."
—Dr. Amy Szczepanski
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pre-Algebra (2008)

"Pythagorean Crimes is a masterly-told story of romance, art, history, political intrigue, and mathematics, all woven together in a thriller that will be sure to captivate you from the first page to the last."
—Eli Maor
The Pythagorean Theorem: a 4,000-Year History and To Infinity and Beyond: A Cultural History of the Infinite
 

"Tefcros Michaelides sets his mystery of the murder of a Greek mathematics high-school teacher against the backdrop of the history of early modernism and the great philosophical questions at the heart of modern mathematics. It’s a delightful synthesis, at once great fun to read and insightful, giving a rare side view of the cultural significance of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem."
—Apostolos Doxiadis
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

 

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 564 KB
• Publisher: Parmenides Publishing; 1 edition (October 20, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0029F2GVA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,922 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Tefcros Michaelides, a Cyprus native, lives in Athens, Greece. He has studied in Paris, France and holds a PhD in Mathematics from Pierre et Marie Curie University. He has published original work on the interaction between mathematics and literature from antiquity to the modern era, on the role of history of science in teaching mathematics and on various aspects of mathematical pedagogy. He has collaborated with various newspapers and magazines publishing articles of science popularisation. His first book, Mathimatika Epikera - A Mathematician's View of Everyday Events was published in 2004. His novel, Pythagorean Crimes was originally published in Greece and was on the Top 10 best selling titles for more then 10 months. Apart from its English edition (Parmenides Press) it also circulates in Italian (Sonzogno Editore, Milan 2008) and Spanish (Roca Editorial, Barcelona 2008). It is actually being translated in Korean, Chinese and French). He has translated more then 25 books from English and French into Greek - including A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, the widely acclaimed and successful The Parrot's Theorem by Denis Guedj, Timescape by Gregory Benford, and D'Alembert's Principle, and Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey. In 2006, the French Government named him "Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques". He is a co-founder of Thales and Friends, an international non profit organisation investigating relations of Mathematics and Narrative. He is actually working on a new novel which will appear in Greek by Christmas 2009 under the title, Ahmes - the moon's son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An unusual historical-math-fiction, March 12, 2009

By 

Grant Cairns (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pythagorean Crimes (Paperback)

It is folklore that Hippasus was drowned by Pythagorians for proving a fact that today we interpret as the irrationality of root 2. In this simple form, this often repeated myth is quite unbelievable. Michaelides' novel is a modern reformulation of the crime. The book is a well crafted piece of historical-math-fiction. However, its basic storyline is just as unbelievable as the original legend, and ultimately it resonates hollowly. The book has several other weaknesses. As a work of fiction, I found that the prose was rather flat and uninspired, though it's possible that the translation has detracted from the original. The mathematical topics that are woven into the text are reasonably well presented, but somewhat predictable; they are very much the tried and true standbys.

The main attractions of the book are its originality of concept, and the fact that considerable care has been taken with its design. The book is unusual in that it has several parallel strands, which are all presented with an historical perspective: in particular, apart from the mathematics, there is an artistic strand, built around Picasso, a fictional underworld/prostitution theme, and a depiction of a number of real political events. The integration of these strands has been well accomplished, and makes the book original and innovative. If you enjoy the fiction-math genre, it is certainly worth reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rather historical, August 1, 2009

By 

Nikolaos Vasiloglou "just an engineer" (Georgia Tech) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pythagorean Crimes (Paperback)

First of all I want to say that I enjoyed the novel. I think the author is influenced by Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession which is not a bad thing, since Doxiadis is a talented writer. The plot is not very exciting but the historical unfolding of mathematics mainly between 1850 to 1930 is very interesting. The author presents the history of math with a lot of unknown details through a group of young people in Paris. The idea to involve Picasso was also very brilliant. We also get the chance to know more about the Greek history between 1900-1930 which is interesting for Greeks like me, but I don't know how other nationalities will feel about.

3.0 out of 5 stars A Crime Thriller with Mathematics, Picasso and Logic, March 21, 2011

By 

Feanor (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pythagorean Crimes (Paperback)

Being obvious is possibly the worst comment a reader can make on a crime novel, but what is obvious to one person may be opaque to another. In Tefcros Michaelides's Pythagorean Crimes, the twist at the end depends for its surprise entirely on whether the reader knows the history of mathematics or not. The plot is rather straightforward - a Greek mathematician is found murdered and his best friend (the narrator) looks back on his career, hoping to find clues to his death in his past. The description of this past is possibly the weakest part of the book: Michaelides evidently believes that describing the excitement and fervour of early 20th century mathematics is insufficient to drive the book forward, so he throws in a long section on the development of modern art in the back alleys of Paris, introducing Picasso and his coterie, and claiming that Picasso's art was much informed by his own fascination for the foundations of logic. The plot hinges on an important question on the underlying consistency of mathematics, but surely it defies logic that the resolution to this question should verily be a life-and-death matter? An OK read.