Amir Aczel

Amir D. Aczel (born November 6, 1950) is a lecturer in mathematics and the history of mathematics and science, and an author of popular books on mathematics and science.

Biography

Amir D. Aczel was born in Haifa, Israel. Aczel's father was the captain of a passenger ship that sailed primarilly in the Mediterranean Sea. When he was ten, Aczel's father taught his son how to steer a ship and navigate. This inspired Aczel's book "The Riddle of the Compass". [Richard Bernstein, "The Invention that Led Sailors Not to Feel at Sea," The New York Times, Sept. 5, 2001 [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806EED91739F936A3575AC0A9679C8B63] ]

When Aczel was 21 he studied at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated with a BA in mathematics in 1975, and received a Master of Science in 1976. Several years later Aczel earned a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Oregon.

Aczel has taught mathematics at universities in California, Alaska, Italy, and Greece. He married in 1984 and has one daughter. He accepted a professorship at Bentley College in Massachusetts where he taught classes on the history of science and the history of mathematics. While teaching at Bentley, Aczel wrote several non-technical books on mathematics and science, as well as two textbooks. His book, "Fermat's Last Theorem" (ISBN 978-1-56858-077-7), was a United States bestseller and was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Aczel has appeared on CNN, CNBC and Nightline. Aczel was a 2004 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Visiting Scholar in the History of Science at Harvard University (2007).

Works

* "How to Beat the I.R.S. at Its Own Game: Strategies to Avoid and Fight an Audit", 1996. ISBN 978-1-568580-48-7
* "Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem", 1997. ISBN 978-1-56858-077-7
* "God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe", 1999. ISBN 1-56858-139-4
* "The Mystery of the Aleph: Relativity, Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity", 2000. ISBN 1-56858-105-X
* "Probability 1: The Book That Proves There Is Life In Outer Space", Harvest Books, January 2000. ISBN 0156010801.
* "The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World", 2001. ISBN 0-15-100506-0
* "Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics", 2002. ISBN 978-0-452-28457-9
* "Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science", 2003. ISBN 0-7434-6478-8
* "Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, and the Stock Market", 2004. ISBN 1568583168
* "Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe", 2005. ISBN 0-7679-2033-3
* "The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed", 2007. High Stakes Publishing, London. ISBN 1-84344-034-2.
* "The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man", 2007. ISBN 978-1-95448-956-3

Notes