Ariel Swartley is a contributing writer and book critic for Los Angeles magazine. THE wild-eyed mad scientist has been a staple of popular imagination since the early 19th century, when Mary Shelley ...

THIS collection of essays, written between 1970 and 2007, provides a window into one of the most interesting minds in maths. Aged 15, Gregory Chaitin defined the complexity of a number as the length ...

I greatly enjoyed Palle Yourgrau’s essay (“Gödel and Einstein: Friendship and Relativity,” The Chronicle Review, December 17). This otherwise excellent piece contains one dubious assertion, however: ...

"All Cretans are liars", said Epimenides, a Cretan. But this means that his statement must be a lie too. But then it is false that Cretans are liars and the statement must be true. So what now?