The Shape of a Life: One Mathematician’s Search for the Universe’s Hidden Geometry
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A Fields medalist recounts his lifelong transnational effort to uncover the geometric shape—the Calabi-Yau manifold—that may store the hidden dimensions of our universe.
Harvard geometer and Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau has provided a mathematical foundation for string theory, offered new insights into black holes, and mathematically demonstrated the stability of our universe. In this autobiography, Yau reflects on his improbable journey to becoming one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians. Beginning with an impoverished childhood in China and Hong Kong, Yau takes readers through his doctoral studies at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam War protests, his Fields Medal–winning proof of the Calabi conjecture, his return to China, and his pioneering work in geometric analysis. This new branch of geometry, which Yau built up with his friends and colleagues, has paved the way for solutions to several important and previously intransigent problems. With complicated ideas explained for a broad audience, this book offers listeners not only insights into the life of an eminent mathematician, but also an accessible way to understand advanced and highly abstract concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics.
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Shing-Tung Yau, the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, is the winner of the Fields Medal, the National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize, the Veblen Prize, the Wolf Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Yau has received honorary degrees from ten universities. He has helped establish six mathematical institutes in China and Hong Kong, and the Center for Mathematical Sciences and Applications at Harvard. Yau has written and edited more than twenty books and also edits numerous mathematics journals.
Steve Nadis, a graduate of Hampshire College, is a contributing editor to Astronomy and Discover. His work has appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines and in the many books he has written or contributed to. Nadis has served as a staff researcher at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an MIT science journalism fellow, and a consultant to the World Resources Institute, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and WGBH/NOVA.
Arthur Morey has recorded over two hundred audiobooks in history, fiction, science, business, and religion, earning a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Award nominations. He was an editor at two publishers and has taught writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed. Arthur attended Harvard and the University of Chicago.
