Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them

An exceptional compilation of modern mathematics and its real-world applications… A fast-paced and dramatic telling of the history of mathematics that is ultimately concerned with convincing us why we should care… Perusing this book will leave readers with awe, enough fun facts for many cocktail parties, and a deep appreciation for mathematicians like Padilla who can explain how understanding a googolplex leads us to the existence of doppelgängers – Brianne Kane * Scientific American *An irreverent tour of extraordinary numbers in physics, big, small and bafflingly infinite. Be amazed as physicist and YouTube star Tony Padilla reveals the inner workings of reality * New Scientist *This delightful book purports to be about numbers, but is really a window onto the astonishing scope and scale of the universe in which we live. You will be amazed at the mind-bending ideas science has proposed in order to grasp reality, and be impressed that our minds are able to bend that far – Sean Carroll, author of SOMETHING DEEPLY HIDDENThis is an extraordinary book. Tony Padilla has been able to weave a remarkable set of mathematical facts into a mesmerising story that kept me gripped throughout. He has an intensity and passion that I haven’t seen for a long time in popular science – Pedro G. Ferreira, author of THE PERFECT THEORYIt was said of the famous Indian mathematician Ramanujan that he knew every number as his personal friend. If you’d like to get to know some of the most charismatic of these characters then Antonio Padilla has written a beautiful Who’s Who of the world of numbers and their role in the make-up of our universe – Marcus du Sautoy, author of THINKING BETTER

Tony Padilla is a leading theoretical physicist and cosmologist at the University of Nottingham. In 2016, he and his team shared the Buchalter Cosmology Prize for their work on the cosmological constant. He is also a star of the Numberphile YouTube network, where his most popular videos include a discussion of Ramanujan’s sum of all positive integers, which has been viewed more than eight million times.