Vector

‘The story I’ll tell here is about the evolution of the way we humans record and make sense of all the data that swirl around us …’

Vector takes readers on an extraordinary, five-thousand-year journey through the human imagination. The stars of this book, vectors and tensors, are unlikely celebrities. Yet mathematician and science writer Robyn Arianrhod shows how they enabled physicists and mathematicians to think in a brand-new way. They inspired James Clerk Maxwell to usher in the wireless electromagnetic age; Einstein to predict the curving of space-time and the existence of gravitational waves; Paul Dirac to create quantum field theory; and Emmy Noether to connect mathematical symmetry and the conservation of energy. Today, you’re likely relying on vectors or tensors each time you pick up your mobile phone, use a GPS, or search online.

In Vector, Robyn Arianrhod shows the genius required to reimagine the world — and how a clever mathematical construct can dramatically change discovery’s direction.