I would be lying if I said I understood much of Edward Frenkel’s Love and Math – but I still enjoyed it.
My “higher” level math education was much more in number theory, calculus, formal logic, set theory, and combinatorics – so what I liked about this book was the introduction to a bunch of things I had heard other people mention in passing but never really studied myself – group theory, manifolds, topology, neighborhoods, Riemann surfaces, etc.
Coincidentally, I watched this youtube video on the shape of space with a friend on the day I finished the book, and I felt a bit better prepared for it.
What’s cool about this book even if you don’t like math is some of the autobiographical elements about Frenkel’s early challenges facing discrimination in academia in the USSR.
- Read Love and Math by Edward Frenkel