Favorite 20th century biographies math music philosophy
Discover the greatest 20th-century biographies in math, music, and philosophy. From Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind to James Gleick's Genius and Miles Davis's raw autobiography, explore the brilliant minds behind numbers, jazz, and ideas. A curated favorite list for curious readers.
Book
A Beautiful Mind
by Sylvia Nasar
A biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994.
Book
Genius
by James Gleick
To his colleagues, Richard Feynman was not so much a genius as he was a full-blown magician: someone who âdoes things that nobody else could do and that seem completely unexpected.â The path he cleared for twentieth-century physics led from the making of the atomic bomb to a Nobel Prize-winning theory of quantam electrodynamics to his devastating exposĂ© of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. At the same time, the ebullient Feynman established a reputation as an eccentric showman, a master safe cracker and bongo player, and a wizard of seduction. Now James Gleick, author of the bestselling Chaos, unravels teh dense skein of Feynmanâs thought as well as the paradoxes of his character in a biographyâwhich was nominated for a National Book Awardâof outstanding lucidity and compassion.