“The Weil siblings both undertook to translate into language something beyond words, beyond symbols,” writes Karen Olsson in The Weil Conjectures [1], a book that traces the lives of one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable brother-sister pairs: the mathematician André Weil and the philosopher Simone Weil. Olsson, a math major turned writer, evokes the Weils’ search for truth––André through abstract calculation, Simone through activism and ascetic denial. In writing that recalls the Weil sister’s own aphoristic style, Olsson shows us how their fates intertwined and diverged, with André finding fame during life, and Simone dying at thirty-four. In telling their stories, Olsson reminds us of the ancient, though often forgotten, idea that “mathematics was a bridge to the divine.”
The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown
Karen Olsson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
$26 | 224 pp.
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