The Spanish edition of Finding Moonshine was published this week by Acantilado.
I was in Spain this week promoting the book. I gave a talk in Madrid at the prestigious Residencia de Estudiantes, home to Dali, Lorca and Bunuel. Other people who have lectured there include Albert Einstein, Paul Valéry, Marie Curie, Igor Stravinsky, John M. Keynes, Alexander Calder, Walter Gropius, Henri Bergson and Le Corbusier.
I also gave a talk in Barcelona at the CosmaCaixa museum. It is a fantastic science museum and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone visiting Barcelona.
Here are some reviews that have appeared in Spain:
El Pais: La Alhambra es un microcosmos de simetrías
Agencia EFE: El científico Marcus Du Sautoy dice que "la simetría es un lenguaje fundamental"
4 comments:
You can read too:
http://noticiariomatematico.blogspot.com
Excelente libro.
Dear Mr. du Sautoy.
I'm a former student of maths. I abandoned my studies while incomplete 20 years ago. Recently, my wife gave me your book about symmetry as a present. Now I am enjoying the reading greatly. You awaked in me a kind of longing for maths. A "math worm" that was sleeping for years. I'm over 40 now, and I'm affraid that I'm out of the list of candidates for the Fields Prize, but as long as I have the chance I have promised myself to keep cultivating my mathematical abilities.
I just wanted to thank you for making Mathematics so appealing. Maths have always been the "cinderella" of sciences, when talking about media, documentaries, etc. Something unfair considering that mathematical creations like Calculus or Group Theory deserve as much respect as peaks of human invention as Bach's music or Gothic cathedrals do.
I didn't mention that I'm spanish, (you can easily guess that from my exotic use of english language), and I was particularly happy reading your description of Alhambra. I'm planning a visit to Granada in a few weeks, and certainly I will appreciate it in a different and richer way. I find convenient nowadays to remember that there was a time in which the european christianity was the barbarian world and the Islamic world was the 'enlightened' one.
All the western science we are proud of was completely forgoten for centuries here. Aristotle, Euclides, and many others were reintroduced in Europe via Anadalusia by the muslim. Cities like Granada, Cordoba, and especially Toledo, were the gates from which knowledge flooded Europe again.
Finally, I'd just like to point out that when you wrote about Al-Khwarizmi, you forgot to mention that we owe to him, not only the word 'algebra', but also that his very name evolved into 'algorithm', and here in Spain, we often use the word 'guarismo', also derived from Al-Khwarizmi's name, as a synonym of 'cypher'.
Thank you again.
Amazing book im just finishing, and im doing some symmetry work.
You can look Marcus on my blog
http://neo2025.blogspot.com
I will be so proud if you would leave some comments
Thanks for your wiseness
Regards
noe
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