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| Simone Weil pictured in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Photo: Apic/Getty Images |
Anyone who has an overachieving sibling will be able to relate to Simone Weil, the French writer and mystic whose brother André was one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century.
Clever as Simone was, she had no hope of competing with her precociously brainy older sibling. As he waded deeper into the world of complex number theory, she looked on with a mixture of bewilderment and awe – as letters between the two reveal.
Clever as Simone was, she had no hope of competing with her precociously brainy older sibling. As he waded deeper into the world of complex number theory, she looked on with a mixture of bewilderment and awe – as letters between the two reveal.
Karen Olsson has documented their complex relationship in The Weil Conjectures, a book which serves as both a joint biography of two extraordinary individuals and an insightful study of sibling dynamics.
A science writer with a background in maths, Olsson had set about writing a book about André Weil and his groundbreaking research in algebraic geometry but his sister – who would gain fame for her philosophical writings and self-sacrificing works – kept pushing into the narrative...
As this week’s Unthinkable guest, Olsson discusses the challenge of fact-checking a sainted life while also addressing the limits of public understanding of science and the lack of gender balance in mathematics.
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Recommended Reading
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| The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown |
