''The Wild Numbers'' is a
mathematical fiction
Mathematical fiction is a genre of creative fictional work in which mathematics and mathematicians play important roles. The form and the medium of the works are not important. The genre may include poems, short stories, novels or plays; comic book ...
in the form of a
short novel
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) fact ...
by
Philibert Schogt, a
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
. It was first published in Dutch (as "De wilde getallen") in 1998 and an English translation appeared in 2000.
Through this work the author is trying to provide insights to the workings of a mathematics-obsessed mind. It is the story of a professor of mathematics who believes he has solved one of the great problems of mathematics -- ''Beauregard's Wild Number Problem''. In the imaginary settings of the novel, the problem is presented as a real mathematical problem seeking a solution and not as a delusion of the protagonist. But in the real mathematical world, there is no such problem; it is a fictitious problem created by the author of the book.
Plot
The novel is presented as a narration by the protagonist, Isaac Swift, of the story. Isaac Swift is an able, though not brilliant, mathematics professor in a small college in an unnamed city in an unnamed country. When the novel opens Swift is in his mid-thirties and desperately trying to establish himself as a mathematician. A respected senior faculty of the mathematics department of the college has just given his seal of approval to Isaac's paper describing a proof of the
wild number problem. Isaac hoped that he would soon be famous and interviewed and feted. Immediately a crisis developed as Swift was accused of plagiarising a proof of the problem already discovered by an older student, Leonard Vale. Vale's accusation was generally ignored because of his cranky behaviour in the department and his tendency to make tall claims on unsolved problems.
Reviews
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See also
*
Wild number
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wild Numbers
Novels about mathematics
1998 novels
20th-century Dutch novels