The Weil Conjectures: On Maths and the Pursuit of the Unknown
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Overview
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’Beguiling ... I was riveted. Olsson is evocative on curiosity as an appetite of the mind, on the pleasure of glutting oneself on knowledge’ - New York Times
’A wonderful book ... Reading it is akin to kicking a can along the road of higher learning’ - Patti Smith
’A remarkable tour de force’ - Standpoint
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Simone Weil: philosopher, political activist, mystic – and sister to André, one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. These two extraordinary siblings formed an obsession for Karen Olsson, who studied mathematics at Harvard, only to turn to writing as a vocation.
When Olsson got hold of the 1940 letters between the siblings, she found they shared a curiosity about the inception of creative thought – that flash of insight – that Olsson experienced as both a mathematics student, and later, a novelist.
Following this thread of connections, The Weil Conjectures explores the lives of Simone and André, the lore and allure of mathematics, and its significance in Olsson’s own life.
’A wonderful book . . . Reading it is akin to kicking a can along the road of higher learning’ Patti Smith
Bluets (7,643 TCM) meets Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (over 200,000 TCM) – The Weil Conjectures is the book on maths for readers who would never usually pick up a book on the subject
Simone Weil has become a cult figure for young writers, much in the vein of Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion – this book offers an accessible entry into her life, philosophy and mind
A beguiling, accessible blend of biography, memoir, history and philosophy
For fans of Maggie Nelson, Carlo Rovelli, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City (21,427 TCM), Rebecca Solnit’s A Fieldguide to Getting Lost (16,608 TCM), and Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse
Beguiling ... The book unfurls effortlessly, loose and legato. There are no real revelations - the subjects are well known and long dead. There are no stakes; there is no suspense. I was riveted. Olsson is evocative on curiosity as an appetite of the mind, on the pleasure of glutting oneself on knowledge
A wonderful book ... Reading it is akin to kicking a can along the road of higher learning
A remarkable tour de force
A nuanced exploration of abstraction versus a lived life
The Weil Conjectures is an alluring meditation on geometry, sacrifice and adolescent self-discovery, delivered in passionate, impressionistic bursts
I loved The Weil Conjectures for Karen Olsson’s humanising, playful approach to these very serious people, but also for her rigour, her thoughtfulness about writing and creativity, and her refreshing blend of two disciplines I tend to think of, erroneously, as irrevocably at odds: math and literature. The Weil Conjectures has that undefinable x common to all the best books. I can’t wait to read it again
Beautiful and enigmatic, Karen Olsson’s book draws us to the brink of spiritual and mathematical genius, to the edge of a field “between knowing and not knowing”, to the verge of an audacious conjecture. The Weil Conjectures is a story of brilliant siblings – one philosopher, one mathematician – who spent their lives at the service of the unattainable. In haunting prose, Olsson asks us to remember, in the words of Simone Weil, that “the eternal part of the soul feeds on hunger”. A true achievement
Few writers could convey with such brilliance and compassion the tensions between literature and mathematics, isolation and communion, logic and intuition, the annihilation of the self and a godly love for others
An unexpected and wholly original delight. By focusing on what has to be the most extraordinarily brilliant brother-sister pair of the last century, Karen Olsson takes us to a realm where sublime mathematical abstraction meets mystical love. The author’s relaxed personal tone and novelistic eye for the telling detail make the book effortlessly readable
Deftly moving to and fro between André and Simone Weil’s lives and her own search for mathematical clarity, Karen Olsson informs, persuades, inspires and delights this reader
- Title: The Weil Conjectures: On Maths and the Pursuit of the Unknown
- Author: Karen Olsson
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2019
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 224
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781526607553, 9781526607546, 1526607549, 1526607557
- Resource ID: LLS:9781526607553
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:52:24Z
Karen Olsson is the author of the novels Waterloo and All the Houses. She has written about politics, science and popular culture for magazines including the New York Times Magazine and Texas Monthly, where she is a contributing editor, and has had work anthologized in Best American Science Writing and Best of the Best American Science Writing, among other places. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.
karenolsson.com
@olssonic