Huge Numbers, 9781399818834
Paperback
Explore mind-bendingly big numbers and how they shaped human thought.
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Huge Numbers

A Story of Counting Ambitiously

$32.75

  • Paperback

    368 pages

  • Release Date

    6 April 2026

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Summary

Imagine if the biggest number you had a symbol for was 1,000,000. In ancient Egypt, anything bigger broke maths.

Still today, writing down some numbers is beyond us: try it with all the zeroes in a googolplex, or an outrageous alien number like TREE(3). Even harnessing every particle in the universe, you wouldn’t come close. But that hasn’t stopped us from hunting down these mind-bendingly big numbers and studying them.

In Huge Numbers, mathematician Richard Elwes sho…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781399818834
ISBN-10:139981883X
Author:Richard Elwes
Publisher:John Murray Press
Imprint:Basic Books
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:368
Release Date:6 April 2026
Weight:0g
Dimensions:234mm x 153mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

PRAISE FOR RICHARD ELWES * - *Fascinating! A brilliantly conceived book on the history, working and going-ons of mathematics … get a copy and become the maths boffin your teacher always wished you were * Vision Magazine *Elwes takes the key concepts, perfectly illustrates them with practical examples and easy-to-follow explanations, and applies the principles to everyday situations. The effect is strangely liberating, and you might soon find yourself acquiring a love of logarithms and a respect for reflex quadrilaterals * Good Book Guide *

About The Author

Richard Elwes

Richard Elwes is a senior lecturer at the University of Leeds and a Holgate Session Leader for the London Mathematical Society. He writes for New Scientist and recently joined the crew at Numberphile, presenting episodes about the very largest numbers in modern mathematics.

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