Amir Alexander is a writer, historian, and mathematician living in Los Angeles whose books explore the surprising ways that mathematics shapes the human world.
Infinitesimal: The Dangerous Mathematical Theory that Shaped the Modern World was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Scientific American. It was selected as “One of the Best Books 2014” by Slate, “One of the Seven Best Books about Science” by the Wall Street Journal, “One of the Best Books 2014” (sci-tech category) by Library Journal, and a “Book of the Week” by Times Higher Education. Infinitesimal has been published in China, Japan, Italy, Taiwan, Brazil, and Romania.
Proof! How the World Became Geometrical also was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Scientific American. Reviewed widely, it was praised as “entertaining, enlightening and admirably well-focused” by the Telegraph. Amir’s newest book, Liberty’s Grid: The Mathematical Vision That Shaped America, will be published by the University of Chicago Press.
Amir reviews books for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Nature, and other publications, and have written Op-Eds for the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. He teaches in the history department at UCLA and also has taught history, philosophy, and the history of science at Stanford and UCLA.
His next book, Liberty’s Grid, recasts the West as a mathematical landscape of limitless possibilities, transforming not only the nation’s physical landscape but its political one as well.