Book review: The Indian Clerk: A Novel by David Leavitt.
This book portrays the characters of mathematicians and related society in England circa WWI, although it doesn’t provide much help at understanding the math.
It does a good job of capturing the eccentricities of people who are obsessed with math. One quote that seemed particularly apt: “It’s as if each of the integers is one of his personal friends”, which reminds me of the analysis in Keith Devlin’s book The Math Gene. But this realism means that the characters aren’t sufficiently likable or exciting for me to want such a lengthy story about them.
One aspect of the book which puzzles me is when he suggests Ramanujan died of lead poisoning. He cites A. B. Young as a source of information on Ramanujan’s illness, in a way that suggests that Young supports that diagnosis. So I was surprised when I checked and saw that Young concludes he died of a liver parasite.