STORY OF A MATHEMATICAL TREASURE ADDS UP TO INTRIGUING READING.(Lifestyle)(Review)

From: Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Date: December 18, 1996 | Copyright information

Here's a scene that almost surely took place in Paris more than half a century ago: At a Left Bank cafe near the Sorbonne, Ernest Hemingway sits at a table trying to write, but he is bothered by the noise of a group of mathematicians arguing heatedly over matters that Hemingway, and most of the rest of us, cannot understand.

Hemingway leaves to go to some less favorite haunt. The mathematicians stay, and, though not celebrated for their presence in Left Bank cafes, they are participating in a grand cultural history even older than Hemingway's.

The scene, plausibly ...

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