"But with mathematics, the more we explore, the bigger the world gets, and thus, for those adventurers out there who always want more, welcome to the world of math."
-David Craft, Some of Infinity
Craft's Some
of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of Mathematics sheds an
entertaining light on mathematics, resulting in a perfect read for anyone with an interest in the
subject. Some of Infinity examines
the roots of mathematics, as each chapter in the novel is dedicated to a
different mathematical concept. Craft delivers this wide array of information
in a personable and simplistic way that is accessible to all types of readers. This
allows his audience to grasp and appreciate the many layers of the book. Shying
away from the academic writing style of most math books, Craft aims to show the
scope of mathematics and the exploration that is possible. His passion for the
subject is contagious and readers will undoubtedly adopt the endless possibilities
of mathematics that Craft presents.
Topics covered in Some of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of
Mathematics
Numbers
Infinity
Probability
Fractals
Geometry
& and many more!
A modern day Renaissance man, David Craft is well versed in many areas. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brown, and went on to earn his Doctorate in Operations Research from MIT in 2004. Craft currently works for Harvard Medical School in oncology research, developing an algorithm for radiation planning. His many interests include Gallery 263, foraging, and creating music.
For more about Craft's mathematical interests and career, we turn to a 2015 interview conducted by the Center of Math:
So we’ve done a little
research on your background, and you have a lot of interests,
I can tell. What did you start with? What did you study at school?
At
undergraduate I studied mechanical engineering, and I studied… well, I usually
say I studied applied math at MIT, but really it was a subject called
Operations Research. It’s Applied Math for real world operations.
What do you do now? You
are an assistant professor at Harvard Medical?
Right, but it’s a pure research job. I have a nice position where it’s
research, and I get to work on whatever I want in the field of radiation
therapy for cancer treatment. So the basic idea is this: when you have a tumor
that you have to hit with radiation, it’s like a puzzle- how to bring the
radiation beams in. We try to conform to the target and try to avoid everything
else. That’s the balance, it’s sort of a high dimensional tradeoff because
there’s the tumor, but all these different organs around it like the heart, or
the liver, or whatever is nearby, and you have to play a sort of balancing game
amongst all those things so that’s where the math comes in.
So after all of these
hobbies, jobs, and working in Oncology, what is bringing you back to pure
mathematics?
Well, every couple of years I’ve come back to just reading a book on
math; popular or in-depth books, but not quite textbooks. I’ve always quite
enjoyed that, it reminds me of my school days and I like that. So the reason
that I wrote this particular book is that I would be talking to friends and
describe some little piece of mathematics. For example, that the number of
primes is infinite. Just little topics. And I really enjoyed saying that to
people, and then getting them to understand what it would mean to prove such a
statement, and then getting them to understand the proof. The fact that you can
do that all within like 20 minutes, even for people who wouldn’t consider
themselves good at math, is just great.
I
never became a math professor because I really like the one-on-one. I have been
a math professor [at Williams college] for a year, and it was good, but I like
the on-on-one. I’ve had a lot of those one-on-ones with people at bars or
parties, and I decided at some point that I could probably cobble these little
vignettes into a book.
The book Craft speaks of became a reality titled,
Some of Infinity: Peaks in the Landscape of Mathematics!
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