mathematics
People who dreamed in equations and forgot to eat.
The Man Who Counted the Hurdy-Gurdies
The man who designed the first computer spent a quarter of his working life fighting street musicians. Guess which project he finished.
The Man Who Refused to Lose a Thought
What does a Victorian mathematician invent when he refuses to lose a single thought to the dark?
The Man Who Chased His Own Equation
What do you do when the blackboard you've been chalking equations onto turns out to be a moving cab?
The Wrapping
The man whose equations run every JPEG, MP3, and MRI scan came back from Egypt convinced heat was the secret to staying alive — and wore several overcoats indoors, in summer, until it killed him.
Monsieur Le Blanc
What do you do when you're convinced Napoleon's army is about to kill your pen pal mid-proof?
The Steersman Goes Home
What does it look like when the man who taught Wall Street to predict the future can't predict where he parked?
The System of One
What happens when the man who proved no system is complete builds one with a single trusted element?
I Have Not The Time
In prison, drunk for the first time, he told his cellmates he would die in a duel over a woman. Nine months later, a woman wrote him a letter.
The King of Time
A Russian poet did the math on every empire that ever fell, got an answer, and predicted the Russian Revolution five years early in a pamphlet nobody read.
The Second Television
Paul Dirac's colleagues measured his speech in a unit they invented: one word per hour.
The Off-Center Wheel
Why would the man who invented the bit build a unicycle that bobbed up and down on purpose?
The Man Who Set Mathematics Back a Month
He owned two half-empty suitcases, had 511 collaborators, and once won a $500 bet he immediately regretted.