Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

About this book

In this critically acclaimed international bestseller Petros Papachristos a mathematical prodigy has devoted much of his life trying to prove one of the greatest mathematical challenges of all time: Goldbachs Conjecture the deceptively simple claim that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes. His feverish and singular pursuit of this goal has come to define his life. Now an old man he is looked on with suspicion and shame by his family-until his ambitious young nephew intervenes. Seeking to understand his uncles mysterious mind the narrator of this novel unravels his story a dramatic tale set against a tableau of brilliant historical figures-among them G. H. Hardy the self-taught Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan and a young Kurt Gdel. Meanwhile as Petros recounts his own lifes work a bond is formed between uncle and nephew pulling each one deeper into mathematical obsession and risking both of their sanity.