Numbers and the World: Essays on Math and Beyond

This book is a collection of essays written by a distinguished mathematician with a very long and successful career as a researcher and educator working in many areas of pure and applied mathematics. The author writes about everything he found exciting about math, its history, and its connections with art, and about how to explain it when so many smart people (and children) are turned off by it. The three longest essays touch upon the foundations of mathematics, upon quantum mechanics and Schrodinger's cat phenomena, and upon whether robots will ever have consciousness. Each of these essays includes some unpublished material. The author also touches upon his involvement with and feelings about issues in the larger world. The author's main goal when preparing the book was to convey how much he loves math and its sister fields.