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
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In praise of Pick’s theorem
Should Pick’s theorem be on the A-level maths syllabus? In a blogpost at the De Morgan Journal, I argue that it should.
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As easy as 123…
In a paper with the unassuming title of Inter-universal Teichmuller theory IV: log-volume computations and set-theoretic foundations [pdf], Shinichi Mochizuki has released a purported proof of the ABC conjecture. This would be huge news…
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Linear Programming in New Scientist
I’ve an article in the current edition of the New Scientist, about linear programming, convex polytopes, and Santos’ recent refutation of the Hirsch conjecture. It’s available online here (£) or in a newsagent near…
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The Wit & Wisdom of Rolf Heuer
Like many others I’ve spent the morning watching the CERN seminar & press-conference on the announcement of the discovery of a Higgs-like boson. I have nothing to add to the huge amount of coverage…
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Happy Turing Day!
Today is Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Mathematicians celebrate him above all for his trailblazing 1936 paper On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem [pdf], which remains a very readable and coherent account…
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A hat game 2
This is a sequel to the first hat game post, please read for the background. Everything here is based on a recent talk by Robert Lubarsky, about work of his with Stefan Geschke, though…
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A hat game 1
Yesterday I heard a great talk by Robert Lubarsky, which provided a delightfully easy route into fairly deep logical waters. He was talking about joint work of his with Stefan Geschke. This is the…
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Consistency in Cricket
In cricket, we usually compare batsmen by their averages, that is to say their mean scores over their careers (total runs scored divided by number of times out). On this measure, the best batsman…
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AI and the Church-Turing Thesis
Over on G+, Alexander Kruel pointed me towards an article by Alex Knapp entitled “Why your brain isn’t a computer”. The point of this post is not to argue whether it is or it…
Richard Elwes - mathematician and writer 