Coming soon:
Huge Numbers

Basic Books, April 2026

“Humanity has always been entranced by big numbers — the bigger the better. This fascinating exploration of the giants of the mathematical world is clear, informative, and immensely readable. Wonderful!”

– Ian Stewart

“A charming tour through the realm of the very, very, very numerous, from the ancient world through the distant future.” 

– Jordan Ellenberg

“Elwes provides a phenomenal scenic tour of googology (the study of huge numbers), covering everything from ancient Mayan and Babylonian numeral systems to the scale of the universe to the dizzyingly fast-growing functions of mathematical logic. I wish I had written this book.”

– Scott Aaronson

Dr Richard Elwes is a writer and Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Leeds in the UK.

YouTube playlist of Richard on Numberphile.

Blog Archive

  • The Chaos of El Naschie

    If you read the December 2008 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Chaos, Solitons, & Fractals, you’ll find an article entitled On the vital difference between number theory and numerology in physics. Perhaps the editor-in-chief…

  • Noting knots

      The very first catalogue of different types of knots dates from 1876, and was the brainchild of the Scottish physicist Peter Guthrie Tait. In fact, Tait believed he was constructing the periodic table…

  • Tied up in Knots

    I’ve got an article about knot theory in this week’s New Scientist magazine.

  • Large Primes Collide

    While the large hadron collider is out of action, fans of scientific enormousness will be pleased to hear that not one but two new large prime numbers have been discovered. They are: 237,156,667 –…

  • Bad Science 1 – Bad Medicine 0

    The Guardian has won its legal battle against Matthias Rath – a vitamin-magnate who told desperate South Africans that his pills could cure AIDS, while “so-called anti-retroviral… drugs severely damage all cells in the…

  • Hadrons in da house

    Cheers to JAM for pointing me to the Large Hadron rap, by Alpinekat:

  • Arithmetician Wanted

    Forget working at MIT, or winning the Field’s medal, there’s currently a vacancy for the most prestigious position in maths: apply here.

  • Countdown to collision!

    CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is warming up! The most powerful particle accelerator ever built, it promises real breakthoughs in our understanding of our universe. Although modern mathematical physics is amazingly flashy and theoretical, at…

  • Purity

    Fields arranged by purity, by xkcd, via The Filter.