Adventures of a mathematician
by Stanislaw M. Ulam · first published 1976
10mentions
7recommended by
10HN commenters
2010–2026first – last mentioned
70% recommend30% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Ulam's autobiography recounts his youth in Lwow and his postwar work at Princeton, Harvard and Los Alamos, offering a vivid portrait of an eventful era and of the people shaping mathematics and physics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2010–2026I want to be a mathematician
Paul R. Halmos
Recommended by 6 · mentioned by 106 recommend · 10 mention6 recommend · 106 recommend
2009–2026The City and the Stars
Arthur C. Clarke
Recommended by 22 · mentioned by 3822 recommend · 38 mention22 recommend · 3822 recommend
2007–2024The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
Paul Hoffman
Recommended by 35 · mentioned by 5235 recommend · 52 mention35 recommend · 5235 recommend
…(after doing important work on it). Elasser was a wandering scientist, who (to me) seemed to be "on the outside of the inside"; he gives accounts of his dealings with most of the atomic era players. - Adventures of a Mathematician (Ulam) - What Little I Remember (Frisch) - Memoirs of a Physicist in the Atomic Age (Elasser) - The Traveller (Yukawa) - Discovery of Anti-Matter (Carl Anderson) Also Freeman Dyson's and Feynman's…
on “Von Neumann, Einstein, Morgenstern, Morse and Lefschetz (1952)” ↗I liked Ulam's Adventures of a Mathematician. William Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma is only partly a biography of von Neumann, still a good book. Gian-Carlo Rota's Indiscrete Thoughts is a mash of bits and pieces, largely about mathematical culture…
on “‘The Fractalist,’ Benoit B. Mandelbrot’s Math Memoir” ↗On another sidenote; his autobiography "Adventures of a Mathematician", is really worth reading. http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Mathematician-S-M-Ulam/dp/0...
on “The Ulam spiral: hidden structure among the prime numbers” ↗Adventures of a Mathematician: http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Mathematician-S-M-Ulam/dp/0...
on “What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?” ↗Stan Ulam's autobiography - Adventures of a Mathematician - talks a bit about this, from his early days in Lwow. It's a good book about interesting times and interesting people - if this wikipedia article interests you, then maybe the book will also.
on “Scottish Café” ↗off-topic, but related. Ulam's "Adventures of a Mathematician" is an excellent and very inspiring book.
on “US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved” ↗This is a great quote. I liked it so much that I had to look up where it is from. "Adventures of a Mathematician", by Stanislaw M. Ulam. > The Polish-born mathematician recalls his formative and early professional years in his pre-war homeland and his work and colleagues at Princeton, Harvard, Wisconsin, and Los…
on “For AI leaders Doom is a form of hype” ↗'Adventures of a Mathematician' is an autobiography of Ulam. I've not read it, but it was recommended by one of my math professors.
on “The Eccentric Lives of Steinhaus, Banach and Ulam (2014)” ↗Stanislaw Ulam (from his book Adventures of a Mathematician): "There are three types of mathematicians. Those that can count and those that can not."
on “Why are mathematicians so bad at arithmetic? (2017)” ↗"He would not even agree to being classified as a mathematician." That's a weird thing to write about someone who wrote an autobiography called "Adventures of a Mathematician".
on “Hitting the Jackpot: The Birth of the Monte Carlo Method – LANL (2023)” ↗