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Two beguiling books show how mathematics is revolutionising our lives

Enjoy Piero Martin’s The Seven Measures of the World, stories about measurement, and explore Four Ways of Thinking by David Sumpter, as he argues that maths can improve our lives

23 October 2023

New Ů��С��Ƶ. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. — A three-dimensional quantum gas atomic clock.
Science Photo Library

Piero Martin

Yale University Press

David Sumpter

Allen Lane

Blame the sundial. A dinner guest in a poem by the Roman writer Plautus, his stomach rumbling, complains that: “The town’s so full of these confounded dials / The greatest part of the inhabitants, / Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the streets”.

We have been slaves to number ever since. Not that we need complain, according to two recent books. Experimental physicist Piero Martin’s spirited and fascinating

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