King of Infinite Space
Scientific works are not highlighted enough at LitPundit, or so the complaint goes. The main reason for this is that it is not strictly literature but then biographies are. So here goes...
Tony Rothman reviewing Siobhan Roberts's new biography of geometer Donald Coxeter titled " King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry" seems to fall into the expected trap of reviewing the subject of the biography rather than the work itself.
No, the excitement in Coxeter's life was internal. His métier was classical geometry—the study of those solids we encounter in high school, such as dodecahedra and icosahedra. But he found three dimensions confining. With little but his mind's eye to illuminate the terrain, Coxeter climbed into the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth dimensions to explore, construct and classify geometric objects according to their symmetry properties.
Luckily for prospective readers, the 'fall' is not complete and the review does go on to to cover the book!
This last challenge is easier to deal with. Roberts has evidently heeded the famous dictum that contributed to Stephen Hawking's success, that every equation in a popular book halves the readership. She goes light on the mathematics and, what's more, is able to exploit geometry's visual aspect to give an idea of the higher-dimensional analogies. Generally her straightforward approach succeeds, but at times one does wish that a CD-ROM and 3-D glasses had been provided to allow a better view of Coxeter's constructions.
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