Apostolos
Doxiadis was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1953. However, he has no
memories of Australia, as his family moved back to Greece when he was still
very young. His father, Konstantinos Apolostolos Doxiadis, was a prominent
architect, who was the principal designer of Islamabad, the capital of
Pakistan. He led the Ekistics movement (Ekistics being the ‘science of human
settlement’), and wrote a book called “Ekistics”, in which he referred to the
concept of a world-wide city as “ecumenopolis”. It is not surprising therefore,
that his son would also become a writer. Given that architecture is based on
number theory to a certain degree, it’s not surprising that Apostolos Doxiadis
was drawn to mathematics at an early age. Indeed, so impressive was an original
paper that he had written on this subject, that he was admitted to New York’s
Columbia University when he was only 15. He then went only to do graduate work
at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where he created
mathematical models for the nervous system.
Since architecture also requires some artistry, it is
perhaps not surprising that Apostolous Doxiadis found himself drawn to the
arts. He directed in the theatre, and then moved on into films: “Underground Passage”
came out in 1983, and “Terirem” was released in 1986. This latter film went on
to win the International Center for Artistic Cinema at the 1988 Berlin Film
Festival. Apostolos Doxiadis’ first novel, “Parallel Life”, was published in
1985, followed by “Makavettas” (“Macbeth”) in 1988, and “Three Little Men” in
1997. Apostolos Doxiadis’ most famous novel, “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s
Conjecture”, was published in 1992. Apostolos Doxiadis translated the novel
from Greek to English himself, and so it became a big international hit in
2000. It also helped that his British publishers, Faber, offered a million
dollars if anyone could solve Goldbach’s Conjecture by the closing date of
March 15, 2002.
Apostolos Doxiadis has also written some plays: “The
Tragical History of Jackson Pollock, Abstract Expressionist” and
“Incompleteness”, about Kurt Godel and his Incompleteness theorem. He is
currently collaborating on “Logicomix”, a graphic novel about the birth of
computers.
What’s in a name? –
Apostolos Doxiadis’ biographical account of how his life has straddled both
Greek and English (article is in pdf format)
The Mystery of the
Black Night’s Noetherian Ring: an investigation into the story-mathemtics
connection with a small detour through chess country – an essay in pdf
format by Apostolos Doxiadis, followed by A Response to
Comments and Questions
Thales + Friends –
their interview with Apostolos Doxiadis
Incompleteness
– this website contains some emails from Apostolos Doxiadis about the writing
of the play
An Odd Evening by
Ian Stewart. Doxiadis wasn't the first to create fiction from prime
numbers...
The Great
Internet Mersenne Prime Search - discover a new prime number!
What is Goldbach's Conjecture? Find out on these
links:
http://library.thinkquest.org/22494/stories/A%20famous%20conjecture.htm
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~huens/gbpage02.htm
http://www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/math/conjectures.html -
more work on prime numbers, plus links about Fermat's Last Theorem and the Four
Colour Map Problem, long-standing mathematical teasers which have been
resolved.
Who was Christian Goldbach? These links shed some
light:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Goldbach.html
Euler -
Goldbach's correspondent.
Did Petros Anargyros exist? Well, no he
didn't. He is Doxiadis' creation. However, there was a Russian
Mathematician from Petros' generation who did find a partial proof of
Goldbach's Conjecture. Read all about Ivan Matveevich
Vinogradov.
Who were the other main players in 'Uncle Petros'?
Read about them here:
Ramanujan:
the Most Touching Story in Mathematics by Dinoj Surendran.
Doug Lenat's AM
programme - a computer programme which replicated Ramanujan's genius
and thought Goldbach's Conjecture uninteresting.
Alan Turning
Home page - maintained by biographer Andrew Hodges.
Kurt
Godel in Blue Hill - did Godel prove time travel possible?
Gregory
Chaitin page - Chaitin's a mathematician who has continued Turing and
Godel's work.
An
Introduction to the work of Euclid by Donald Lancon.
Was Maths
invented or discovered?
