100 Best Mathematician Biography Books of All Time

Carl ZimmerYes. This is a fascinating book on so many different levels. It is really compelling as the story of the author trying to uncover the history of the woman from whom all these cells came. (Source)

A.J. JacobsGreat writer. (Source)

Elon MuskQuite interesting. (Source)

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

Gary VaynerchukI've read 3 business books in my life. If you call [this book] a business book. (Source)

Sergey BrinBrin told the Academy of Achievement: "Aside from making really big contributions in his own field, he was pretty broad-minded. I remember he had an excerpt where he was explaining how he really wanted to be a Leonardo [da Vinci], an artist and a scientist. I found that pretty inspiring. I think that leads to having a fulfilling life." (Source)

Larry PageGoogle co-founder has listed this book as one of his favorites. (Source)

Peter AttiaThe book I’ve recommended most. (Source)

Ariel RubinsteinThe story of John Nash is really a human story – I don’t think it sheds much light on game theory. But it gives hope to people dealing with this disease. (Source)

Diane CoyleThis is a terrific book for just saying something about what game theory helps to do, without plunging you into all the complicated mathematics of how to do it in practice. (Source)

Gabriel CoarnaI read "The Last Lecture" because I had seen Randy Pausch give this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo (Source)

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

Elon MuskI didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. [...] I also feel it’s worth reading books on scientists and engineers. (Source)

Scott Belsky[Scott Belsky recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Richard BransonElon Musk is a man after my own heart: a risk taker undaunted by setbacks and ever driven to ensure a bright future for humanity. Ashlee Vance's stellar biography captures Musk's remarkable life story and irrepressible spirit. (Source)

Casey NeistatI'm fascinated by Elon Musk, I own a Tesla, I read Ashlee Vance's biography on Elon Musk. I think he's a very interesting charachter. (Source)

Roxana BitoleanuA business book I would definitely choose the biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, because of Elon's strong, even extreme ambition to radically change the world, which I find very inspiring. (Source)

Bill GatesI think Leonardo was one of the most fascinating people ever. Although today he’s best known as a painter, Leonardo had an absurdly wide range of interests, from human anatomy to the theater. Isaacson does the best job I’ve seen of pulling together the different strands of Leonardo’s life and explaining what made him so exceptional. A worthy follow-up to Isaacson’s great biographies of Albert... (Source)

Satya NadellaMicrosoft CEO has plunged into what must be an advance copy of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. Isaacson’s biography is based on the Renaissance master’s personal notebooks, so you know we’re going to be taken into the creative mind of the genius. (Source)

Ryan HolidayTruly excellent book about one of history’s all time greats. (Source)

Elon MuskI didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. [...] Isaacson's biography on Franklin is really good. Cause he was an entrepreneur and he sort of started from nothing, actually he was just like a run away kid, basically, and created his printing business and sort... (Source)

Scott Belsky[Scott Belsky recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Brandon StantonThe [biography of Benjamin Franklin] I read. (Source)

Alex BellosUnlike Ifrah, Charles Seife is a brilliant popular science writer who has here written the ‘biography’ of zero. And even though he doesn’t talk that much about India, it works well as a handbook to Ifrah’s sections on India. Because Seife talks about how zero is mathematically very close to the idea of infinity, which is another mathematical idea that the Indians thought about differently. Seife... (Source)

Bryan JohnsonChronicles how hard it was for humanity to come up with and hold onto the concept of zero. No zero, no math. No zero, no engineering. No zero, no modern world as we know it... (Source)

William NewmanIt’s a magisterial book. It’s the only treatment of Newton that really tries to give a detailed study of the totality of his science alongside his religion and his work on alchemy, which covered more than 30 years. (Source)

Ed ZschauA fabulous book. (Source)

Daniel GolemanMichael Pollan masterfully guides us through the highs, lows, and highs again of psychedelic drugs. How to Change Your mind chronicles how it’s been a longer and stranger trip than most any of us knew. (Source)

Yuval Noah HarariChanged my mind, or at least some of the ideas held in my mind. (Source)

David Heinemeier HanssonHow we get locked into viewing the world, ourselves, and each other in a certain way, and then finding it difficult to relate to alternative perspectives or seeing other angles. Studying philosophy, psychology, and sociology is a way to break those rigid frames we all build over time. But that’s still all happening at a pretty high level of perception. Mind altering drugs, and especially... (Source)

James AltucherAnd while you are at it, throw in “Bounce” by Mathew Syed, who was the UK Ping Pong champion when he was younger. I love any book where someone took their passion, documented it, and shared it with us. That’s when you can see the subleties, the hard work, the luck, the talent, the skill, all come together to form a champion. Heck, throw in, “An Astronaut’s Guide to Earth” by Commander Chris... (Source)

Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. (Source)

Simon CarleyAlso love the idea of being a zero. Totally agree that some of my finest colleagues are that. I’m fact the doc I want to look after me in resus is defo a zero. (Read the book to find out why). (Source)

M G LeonardIt’s a real work of genius and needs to be kept on every child’s bedside table. (Source)

Seth MnookinThe Ghost Map is a book that I oftentimes give to people to show them how cool and exciting and accessible and gripping stories about scientific discoveries can be. (Source)

Alison AlvarezI read the Ghost Map, a book about 1854 London Cholera outbreak. The outbreak was stopped because of a map created by Dr. John Snow. You can see hints of this map in some of our customer discovery tools because it was such an effective way of pinpointing a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. (Source)

Stephen EvansJohnson looks at London during a specific moment in time, August 1854, and focuses on a particular incident, an outbreak of cholera in Soho, in Central London. (Source)

Chris FussellThe history of how great ideas evolve. (Source)

Brian BurkhartThis book is essentially a biography of all the people who’ve led to the technology of today—it’s fascinating. The most important point of the book is everything is one long, connected chain. There isn’t just one person or one industry that makes anything happen—it all goes way back. For example, the communication theory I have espoused and taught throughout my career is from Aristotle, Socrates,... (Source)

Sean Gardner@semayuce @MicrosoftUK @HelenSharmanUK @astro_timpeake @WalterIsaacson Yes, I agree: "The Innovators" is a great book. I loved it too. (Source)

Erik RostadHere is something that recently helped me. It comes from the book A Mind at Play by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman. I'll quote the passage directly and then describe how it helped me: "What does information really measure? It measures the uncertainty we overcome. It measure our chances of learning something we haven't yet learned. Or, more specifically: when one thing carries information about... (Source)

Bryan Johnson[Bryan Johnson recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)

Dustin Moskovitz[Dustin Moskovitz recommended this book during a Stanford lecture.] (Source)

Craig PearceIf you read to maintain motivation and be entertained, I recommend a few books that in addition to telling great stories, also contain lessons and learnings. You won’t gain many step-by-step type lessons from these books but you will come away realizing that not all startups, regardless of what stage they are in, are as well polished as they make you think. You will realize that they make... (Source)

Angela PhamThe Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick made me a fan of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg years ago. I didn’t hesitate to take my current role at Facebook because I feel so strongly about their integrity and leadership, no matter the negative sentiments and media narratives the company has endured recently. (Source)

Naval RavikantI’ve been reading Perfectly Reasonable Deviations, and I’ve also been rereading Genius. (Source)

Dominic D'agostinoGene Kranz has always been a huge inspiration. Just finished his book "Failure is not an option". The level of detail he goes into describing mission control is fantastic. https://t.co/ii5UpJBKty https://t.co/wPc9anl07C (Source)

Elon MuskThere is a good book on rocket stuff called Ignition! [An informal history of liquid rocket propellants] by John Clark, that’s a really fun one. (Source)

Rick Klau@AtulAcharya @stevesi Same. Read it in college, realized I was more excited about the tech than what I was studying -- and Cliff did such a great job helping you understand what was going on. Such a great book. (Source)

James Stanley"The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll is another great book. I believe it's the first documented account of a computer being misused by a remote attacker. It talks about how Clifford attached physical teleprinters to the incoming phone lines so that he could see what the attacker was actually doing on the computer, and how he traced the attacker across several countries. (Source)

Kim DotcomThe Winklevoss brothers mailed me this awesome must-read book #bitcoinbillionaires with a really nice personal note. Thank you @winklevoss and @tylerwinklevoss. Facebook was stolen from you but what you’ve created since then is even more impressive. Crypto is the future. https://t.co/iAkfU1Dm65 (Source)

Bill LeeThank you @tylerwinklevoss @winklevoss for sending me the must read @benmezrich book with the nice signed note. You guys are ushering in the crypto revolution and have captured lightning in a bottle again. #respect #BitcoinBillionaires https://t.co/QNaJLkQPJa (Source)

Robin WilsonRon (Source)

Doug McMillonHere are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

David Heinemeier HanssonMichael Lewis is just a great storyteller, and tell a story in this he does. It’s about two Israeli psychologists, their collaboration on the irrationality of the human mind, and the milestones they set with concepts like loss-aversion, endowment effect, and other common quirks that the assumption of rationality doesn’t account for. It’s a bit long-winded, but if you like Lewis’ style, you... (Source)

Francisco Perez Mackenna​This summer, Mackenna is learning more about the birth of behavioral economics, the psychology of white collar crime, and the restoration of American cities as locations of economic growth. (Source)

David BlaineOne of the more fascinating men that I’ve read about. (Source)

Eric RiesKelly spent a record-breaking year in space and this book is a fascinating account of that time and what he learned about humanity and himself. (Source)

Anoop AnthonyReading Endurance puts things in perspective; some of us have callings with remarkable purpose — the very future of humankind — at significant risk to one's own life and creature comforts. It may sound corny, but it makes one wonder: can the work we do in our industries and businesses have a higher purpose than just commercial success? (Source)

Timothy J. JorgensenI chose this book because radio waves are a type of radiation. (Source)

Barbara KiserThis is a firecracker of a book—a shot across the bows of theoretical physics. Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist working on quantum gravity and blogger, confronts failures in her field head-on. (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

George DysonAlan Turing was born exactly 100 years ago, [editor’s note: this interview was done in 2012] and died aged 41. In those 41 years he led an amazing life that is covered with extraordinary grace, complexity and completeness by Andrew Hodges in this biography. It was first published in 1983 and remains in print. (Source)

Richard BejtlichIn 2002 I reviewed Kevin Mitnick's first book, The Art of Deception. In 2005 I reviewed his second book, The Art of Intrusion. I gave both books four stars. Mitnick's newest book, however, with long-time co-author Bill Simon, is a cut above their previous collaborations and earns five stars. As far as I can tell (and I am no Mitnick expert, despite reading almost all previous texts mentioning... (Source)

Antonio EramThis book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)

Nick JanetakisI'm going to start reading Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick this week. I used to go to 2600 meetings back when he was arrested for wire fraud and other hacking related shenanigans in the mid 1990s. I'm fascinated by things like social engineering and language in general. In the end, I just want to be entertained by his stories. For someone who is into computer programming, a book like this... (Source)

Elon MuskI didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. [...] I think it's also worth reading books on scientists and engineers. Tesla, obviously. (Source)

Maya Zlatanova[One of the books that had the biggest impact on Maya.] (Source)

Marcus du SautoyYes, it really appealed to me when I read it as a kid because I was interested in music, I played the trumpet, I loved doing theatre, and somehow GH Hardy in that book revealed to me how much mathematics is a creative art as much as a useful science. In fact he probably goes further, he really revels in the beauty of the subject and says he’s not particularly interested in the applications. That... (Source)

Can DurukInteresting thread about @annawiener’s book. I’d like us, as the tech industry, to move past framing every single criticism or commentary on our work as “anti tech screed”. Seems like books like this are key, but it requires an open and inquisitive mind more than anything. https://t.co/OCCgGyScwQ (Source)

Kara Swisher@AmyAlex63 @GuardianUS Agreed but it is a great book and very sly (Source)

Robert WentGreat book! Uncanny Valley author @annawiener on the stories tech companies tell themselves. My hope is to provide an ordinary employee’s perspective, which is one that for many different reasons is harder for a lot of people to share publicly https://t.co/sUzc5wJeCk (Source)