A review by rafaela_borges
Adventures of a Mathematician by S. M. Ulam

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

It's a very nice biography with fun anecdotes, insights about the scientific community, and reflections about technology and mathematics. My favorite parts were the ones about Ulam's close friendship with von Neumann. It was also very interesting to know more about the Polish school of mathematics, even though I don't know much about math and couldn't understand some parts, especially the final chapter that focus exclusively on it. And for me, Ulam is particularly interesting due to his very extroverted, optimistic nature, which affects the way he did mathematics, and I was quite happy to see how he managed to do some of his best work after almost dying of encephalitis.

Overall, reading this book was a very nice, enjoyable experience and Ulam is definitely an underrated scientist (in popular non-mathematical circles, I mean). I've been meaning to read von Neumann's biography and I hope it has more insight into their friendship.