Books and Movies

All of these books are available in the School Library to borrow.

Click here to visit the McLauchlan Library

General Mathematics

New Magazines and websites

Alex's Adventures in Numberland, Alex Bellos
Through the Looking Glass, Alex Bellos
1086 and All That, Donald Acheson
The Mathematics of Love, Hannah Fry
Prime Obsession, John Derbyshire
The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure, Hans Magnus Enzensberger

"I found this book very funny, especially when Robert outwits the Number Devil, and I learned more from the Enzebergian devil who beguiled Robert and I, into a dream world of ideas. I would really recommend this book for anyone- of any age – who has ever been mystified by maths." - Luxmi, Year 8.

UCL's Chalkdust Magazine for the mathematically curious has its finger on the pulse, containing great 5-minute articles and problems that can keep you busy for a week!

http://chalkdustmagazine.com/

Recreational Mathematics

The Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, Ian Stewart.
Seventeen Equations that Changed the World, Ian Stewart.
The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, Simon Singh.
The Birth of a Theorem, Cedric Villani (apparently impenetrable but Villani is an interesting speaker - watch him here).
The Music of the Primes, Marcus du Sautoy. You can get a taste for his writing on his website here.
How Not to Be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life, Jordan Ellenberg.

Physics/Engineering

How long is a piece of string? Rob Eastaway.
Six Easy Pieces (and the sequel Six Not-so-Easy Pieces, Richard Feynman.
The Big Questions: Physics, Michael Brooks.
The Quantum Universe: Why everything that can happen, does happen. Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. "It explains the calculations to show how the maximum mass of a white dwarf can be calculated using thought experiments (and a calculator)."

Biographies of Mathematicians

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Paul Hoffman
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, Robert Kanigel
Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges
Euler: The Master of Us All, William Dunham
Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter - this book is a particular favourite of Mr. Taylor-West.
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly
Prime Mystery: The Life and Mathematics of Sophie Germain, Dora E. Musielak

Books for Challenges

The Mathematical Experience
Philip J Davis and Reuben Hersh
A varied selection of articles both long and short and of varying technical difficulty. They cover mainly historical and philosophical aspects of the subject.

The Problems of Mathematics
Ian Stewart
A survey of some of the central problems in maths, both past and present. You might also like to try Nature’s Numbers or his most well-known book Does God Play Dice? His style is clear and fairly straightforward.

The Pleasures of Counting
T W Körner
Examples of how maths has been used in different situations, some of them quite unlikely. Read the preface to get an idea of the author’s style. Some of the maths on display is difficult – don’t be put off if you don’t get it even after a prolonged period of thought, you should still be able to understand the gist of the explanation.

What is Mathematics, Really?
Reuben Hersh
Relatively accessible philosophy of maths with a historical slant. The first part is more general; the second part contains a fair few sentences of the type “But he doesn’t discover an ontology to go with his fallibilist epistemology”, which you may choose to avoid. There are some helpful notes about maths (rather than philosophy) at the back.

The Mathematical Brain & The Maths Gene
Brian Butterworth, Keith Devlin
These both deal with the psychology of mathematics. Devlin is interested in the notion of maths as a language and how as a species we ended up doing maths in the way we do. Butterworth is a cognitive neuroscientist and includes several interesting case studies both of experimental work and of people with dysfunction when it comes to arithmetic. These books will probably be of most interest to anyone thinking of doing psychology, medicine etc.. They are not about how to do mathematical problems!