Vector

Trade Paperback

A surprising story of space, time, and mathematical transformation

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.

Arianrhod shows, with beautiful ease, that maths is not some foreign world only geeks inhabit. It is the world around us. Adam Spencer

'A masterpiece of science exposition.' Joseph Mazur, author of The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time

'Arianrhod s lively and detailed chronicle explains why vectors and tensors are at the heart of our best ways to think about the universe.' Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe