Love and math : the heart of hidden reality

Frenkel believes in the unawakened power of pure maths, being part of Penrose's triangle made up of the physical world, the mental world and the Platonic world of math. They are separate but intertwined, and while we appreciate the significance of the physical and mental world, we are still ignorant of the power of mathematics. He envisions that once we “awake to this hidden reality” our society will experience a shift on the order of the Industrial Revolution.

His book is his way of pulling us over onto his side, by telling his personal story (struggling Russia's discriminating education system) and by explaining his research area. While I had to give up on truly understanding the math sections about halfway into the book (Riemann surfaces, sheafs, Galois groups ..) following his life story was very engaging and it was interesting to learn about how collaborative and dependant the whole network of mathematicians actually is.

Passion is contagious, and I love reading about other people's passions, especially if in pursuit of science, in pursuit of truth. And math has a unifying power, it being the universal language, that never gets lost in translation.