Robert Kanigel – författare

The Man Who Knew Infinity is the true story of a friendship between Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy that forever changed mathematics. In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the pre-eminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realising the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled.With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, 'the Prince of Intuition,' tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, 'the Apostle of Proof'. In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.Adapted into a film in 2016 starring Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Stephen Fry, Toby Jones and Devika Bhise.

Robert Kanigel takes us into the heady world of a remarkable group of scientists working at the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins University: a dynasty of American researchers who for over forty years have made Nobel Prize- and Lasker Award-winning breakthroughs in biomedical science.

What makes genuine leather genuine? What makes real things real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it's hard to know.Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the fourteenth century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870s came Leatherette, a new bookbinding material. The twentieth century gave us Fabrikoid, Naugahyde, Corfam, and Ultrasuede. Each claims to transcend leather's limitations, to do better than nature itself-or at least to convince consumers that it does.Perhaps more than any other natural material, leather stands for the authentic and the genuine. Its animal roots etched in its pores and in the swirls of its grain, leather serves as cultural shorthand for the virtues of the real over the synthetic, the original over the copy, the luxurious over the shoddy and second-rate. From formica, vinylsiding, and particle board to cubic zirconium, knockoff designer bags, and genetically altered foods, inspired fakes of every description fly the polyester pennant of a brave new man-made world. Each represents a journey of scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial innovation. Faux Real explores this borderland of the almost-real, the ersatz, and the fake, illuminating a centuries-old culture war between the authentic and the imitative.

The story of the making, loss, and recovery of some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, raising questions about ancient mosaic art and its creation, the work of archaeology, and museum practice.In 1932, after years of fundraising and flurries of letters back and forth, an archaeological team from Princeton University gathered in Antioch, Syria. They expected to find sculptures, frescos, palace walls, and busts. Instead, all across this ancient Roman metropolis, they stumbled upon one site after another of extraordinary mosaic treasure, incomparable in number, quality, and historical significance. There were some three hundred of them in all, glories of color and design, stones and pieces of glass heaped up into spectacular images. Many of them were vast, room-sized tableaus, commissioned by wealthy Antiochenes for their villas. They depict banquets, drinking contests, olive harvests; lions, leopards, peacocks, and gazelles; legends, scenes from mythology, Cupid and Psyche, Narcissus and Dionysus. Though dated to early in the Christian era, they are unabashedly pagan; the animals and plants they depict are so life-like scholars can often identify them by species. A vast, collectively obsessive outpouring of industry and effort, art and artisanship, they stand for beauty, the drive to make it, and the human need to have it as part of life. The eight-year dig at Antioch was an astonishing human enterprise, one that survived Depression-era financial downturns, interpersonal conflict, and the looming threat of World War II. Gained were mosaics that ultimately ended up in museums around the world—Harvard University, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, The Baltimore Museum of Art, New York’s Metropolitan, Paris’s Louvre, and more than a dozen others. But while an archaeological triumph, shedding new light on the ancient world, it also raised profound questions about the nature and progress of art. Who has a right to a work of art—the country of origin or the archaeologists who dig it up? Is art more interesting for its beauty, its history, or the craft and intelligence that goes into its making? What elevates a craftsperson into an artist? Robert Kanigel tackles these questions and more, breathing life into this landmark adventure of intellect and discovery.

Der Bericht uber das vielleicht grosste mathematische Genie des 20. Jahrhunderts liest sich wie ein spannender Roman.