The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math

Written by Manil Suri

Narrated by Eric Jason Martin

Our universe has multiple origin stories, from religious creation myths to the Big Bang of scientists. But if we leave those behind and start from nothing-no matter, no cosmos, not even empty space-could we create a universe using only math? Irreverent and boundlessly creative, The Big Bang of Numbers invites us to try.

In this new mathematical origin story, mathematician and novelist Manil Suri creates a natural progression of ideas needed to design our world, starting with numbers and continuing through geometry, algebra, and beyond. He reveals the secret lives of real and imaginary numbers, teaches them to play abstract games with real-world applications, discovers unexpected patterns that connect humble lifeforms to enormous galaxies, and explores mathematical underpinnings for randomness and beauty. With evocative examples ranging from multidimensional crochet to the Mona Lisa's asymmetrical smile, as well as ingenious storytelling that helps illuminate complex concepts like infinity and relativity, The Big Bang of Numbers charts a playful, inventive course to existence. Mathematics, Suri shows, might best be understood not as something we invent to explain Nature, but as the source of all creation, whose directives Nature tries to obey as best she can.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781696608886

Manil Suri

Manil Suri was born in Bombay in 1959 and is a distinguished university professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has written three novels, The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva, and The City of Devi, as well as the non-fiction book, The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Maths. His fiction has been translated into twenty-seven languages, longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, LA Times Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award and the W H Smith Literary Award, and has won the McKitterick Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. He was named by Time magazine as a 'Person to Watch' in 2000. He lives in Maryland, USA. https://www.manilsuri.com/