Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers

Amir D. Aczel

01/2015 · Macmillan + ORM

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“A captivating story, not just an intellectual quest but a personal one . . . gripping [and] filled with the passion and wonder of numbers.” —The New York Times

Virtually everything in our lives is digital, numerical, or quantified. But the story of how and where we got these numerals, which we so depend on, has for thousands of years been shrouded in mystery. Finding Zero is the saga of Amir Aczel’s lifelong obsession: to find the original sources of our numerals, perhaps the greatest abstraction the human mind has ever created.

Aczel has doggedly crisscrossed the ancient world, scouring dusty, moldy texts, cross-examining so-called scholars who offered wildly differing sets of facts, and ultimately penetrating deep into a Cambodian jungle to find a definitive proof. Here, he takes the reader along for the ride.

The history begins with Babylonian cuneiform numbers, followed by Greek and Roman letter numerals. Then Aczel asks: Where do the numbers we use today, the so-called Hindu-Arabic numerals, come from? It is this search that leads him to explore uncharted territory on a grand quest into India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and ultimately into the wilds of Cambodia. There he is blown away to find the earliest zero—the keystone of our entire system of numbers—on a crumbling, vine-covered wall of a seventh-century temple adorned with eaten-away erotic sculptures.

While on this odyssey, Aczel meets a host of fascinating characters: academics in search of truth, jungle trekkers looking for adventure, surprisingly honest politicians, shameless smugglers, and treacherous archaeological thieves—who finally reveal where our numbers come from.

“A historical adventure that doubles as a surprisingly engaging math lesson . . . rip-roaring exploits and escapades.” —Publishers Weekly

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Amir D. Aczel is the author of fifteen books, including The Riddle of the Compass, The Mystery of the Aleph, and the international bestseller Fermat's Last Theorem. An internationally known writer of mathematics and science, he is a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Brookline, MA.