This is a book unlike almost anything else on a mathematics shelf. Mariana Cook is a photographer, and what she has produced here is a portrait collection of some of the most significant mathematicians alive at the time of publication, each accompanied by a short personal essay written by the mathematician themselves. The result is something genuinely moving and quite unlike a standard popular mathematics book.
The photographs are striking. Cook has a gift for capturing people in a way that feels honest rather than posed, and the mathematicians she photographs come across as fully human, thoughtful, sometimes eccentric, often deeply passionate about their work. You see Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. You see John Conway, Ingrid Daubechies, Shing-Tung Yau and dozens of others. For a student who has only ever encountered these names in textbooks or footnotes, seeing the people behind the mathematics is a genuinely different kind of experience.
The essays are short but often remarkably candid. Mathematicians write about what drew them to the subject, what it feels like to work on a hard problem, and what mathematics means to them as a way of life. There is a recurring theme of obsession, of not being able to stop thinking about a problem, that will resonate with anyone who has felt that pull.
I find this book particularly valuable for showing students that mathematics is a human activity carried out by real people with real lives, personalities and struggles. It is the kind of book that can quietly shift the way a student thinks about what they are working towards.
I recommend it to anyone who loves mathematics and is curious about the people who have shaped it.