Alexander Masters tripped over his first book subject on a Cambridge sidewalk, and the result was the multi-award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards. His second, he�s found under his floorboards. One of the greatest mathematical prodigies of the twentieth century, Simon Norton stomps around Alexander�s basement in semidarkness, dodging between stalagmites of bus timetables and engorged plastic bags, eating tinned kippers stirred into packets of Bombay mix. Simon is exploring a theoretical puzzle so complex and critical to our understanding of the universe that it is known as the Monster. It looks like a sudoku table�except a sudoku table has nine columns of numbers. The Monster has 808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000 columns. But that�s not the whole story. What�s inside the decaying sports bag he never lets out of his clutches? Why does he hurtle out of the house in the middle of the night? And�good God!�what is that noxious smell that creeps up the stairwell? Grumpy, poignant, comical�more intimate than either the author or his quarry intended�Simon: The Genius in My Basement is the story of a friendship and a pursuit. Part biography, part memoir, and part popular science, it is a study of the frailty of brilliance, the measures of happiness, and Britain�s most uncooperative egghead eccentric. From the Hardcover edition.
(less)Alexander Masters tripped over his first book subject on a Cambridge sidewalk, and the result was the multi-award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards. His second, he�s found under his floorboards. One of the greatest mathematical
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