Alex Bellos | |
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 Alex Bellos in 2011 | |
| Born | Alexander Bellos 1969 (age 54–55) [1] |
| Education | Hampton Park Comprehensive School Richard Taunton Sixth Form College |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford (BA, MA) |
| Employers | |
| Awards | British Book Awards [ when? ] |
| Website | alexbellos |
Alexander Bellos (born 1969) [1] is a British writer, broadcaster and mathematics communicator. [3] [4] [5] [6] He is the author of books about Brazil and mathematics, as well as having a column in The Guardian newspaper. [2] [7]
Alex Bellos was born in Oxford and grew up in Edinburgh and Southampton. He was educated at Hampton Park Comprehensive School and Richard Taunton Sixth Form College in Southampton. [1] He went on to study mathematics and philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, [1] where he was the editor of the student paper Cherwell.[ citation needed ]
Bellos's first job was working for The Argus [1] in Brighton before moving to The Guardian in London in 1994. From 1998 to 2003 he was South America correspondent of The Guardian, [2] [8] and wrote Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life. [9] The book was well received in the UK, where it was nominated for sports book of the year at the British Book Awards. In the US, it was included as one of Publishers Weekly's books of the year. They wrote: “Compelling...Alternately funny and dark...Bellos offers a cast of characters as colorful as a Carnival parade”. In 2006, he ghostwrote Pelé: The Autobiography, about the soccer player Pelé, which was a number one best-seller in the UK. [10] [11]
Returning to live in the UK, Bellos decided to write about mathematics. The book Alex's Adventures in Numberland was published in 2010 and spent four months in The Sunday Times' top ten best-sellers' list. The Daily Telegraph described the book as a "mathematical wonder that will leave you hooked on numbers." The book was shortlisted for three awards in the UK, including the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2010. [12] The Guardian reported that Bellos's book was narrowly beaten into second place. Chairman of the judges Evan Davis broke with protocol to discuss their deliberations: "[Bellos's] was a book everyone thought would be nice if it won, because it would be good for people to read a maths book. Some of us wished we'd read it when we were 14 years old. If we'd taken the view that this is a book everyone ought to read, then it might have gone that way." [13]
Several translations of the book have been published. The Italian version, Il meraviglioso mondo dei numeri, won both the €10,000 Galileo Prize for science books [14] [15] [16] and the 2011 Peano Prize [17] for mathematics books. In the United States, the book was given the title Here's Looking at Euclid. [18]
Alex Through The Looking-Glass: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life was published in 2014 and received positive reviews. The Daily Telegraph wrote: “If anything, Looking Glass is a better work than Numberland – it feels more immediate, more relevant and more fun.” [19] Its US title was The Grapes of Math, about which The New York Times said Bellos was: “a charming and eloquent guide to math’s mysteries…There’s an interesting fact or mathematical obsessive on almost every page. And for its witty flourishes, it’s never shallow. Bellos doesn’t shrink from delving into equations, which should delight aficionados who relish those kinds of details.”
Bellos presented the BBC TV series Inside Out Brazil (2003), [20] and also authored the documentary Et Dieu créa…le foot, about football in the Amazon rainforest, which was shown on the National Geographic Channel. [21] His short films on the Amazon have appeared on BBC, More4 and Al Jazeera. [4] [22] He also appears frequently on the BBC talking about mathematics. His Radio 4 documentary Nirvana by Numbers was shortlisted for best radio programme in the 2014 Association of British Science Writers Awards.
Bellos appeared in the 2023 Christmas University Challenge series as team captain of Oxford's Corpus Christi team, reaching the final, only to be beaten by the Middlesex team.
Bellos lives in London[ citation needed ] and is married with children. [1] His father David Bellos [1] is a translator and academic [29] and his mother is Hungarian. [30]
John Horton Conway was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life.
Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was a leading authority on Lewis Carroll; The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies. He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century". He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers. He was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books.
In mathematics, the natural numbers are the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on, possibly excluding 0. Some start counting with 0, defining the natural numbers as the non-negative integers0, 1, 2, 3, ..., while others start with 1, defining them as the positive integers1, 2, 3, .... Some authors acknowledge both definitions whenever convenient. Sometimes, the whole numbers are the natural numbers plus zero. In other cases, the whole numbers refer to all of the integers, including negative integers. The counting numbers are another term for the natural numbers, particularly in primary school education, and are ambiguous as well although typically start at 1.
Nicolo, known as Tartaglia, was an Italian mathematician, engineer, a surveyor and a bookkeeper from the then Republic of Venice. He published many books, including the first Italian translations of Archimedes and Euclid, and an acclaimed compilation of mathematics. Tartaglia was the first to apply mathematics to the investigation of the paths of cannonballs, known as ballistics, in his Nova Scientia ; his work was later partially validated and partially superseded by Galileo's studies on falling bodies. He also published a treatise on retrieving sunken ships.
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The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and since it was established in 1988 has championed writers such as Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and Bill Bryson. In 2015 The Guardian described the prize as "the most prestigious science book prize in Britain".
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Os Santásticos is the nickname for the group of Santos Futebol Clube players coached by Lula and Antoninho that won a total of 25 titles between 1959 and 1974, including two Copa Libertadores. The group is considered one of the strongest teams ever assembled in any sport, scoring over 3000 goals during this period, with an average of over 2.5 goals per match.
Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) is an educational foundation and non-profit corporation devoted to preserving the legacy and spirit of prolific writer Martin Gardner. G4G organizes conferences where people who have been inspired by or have a strong personal connection to Martin Gardner can meet and celebrate his influence. These events explore ideas and developments in recreational mathematics, magic, illusion, puzzles, philosophy, and rationality, and foster creative work in all of these areas by enthusiasts of all ages. G4G also facilitates a related series of events called Celebration of Mind (CoM).
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