Home » Greece » Apostolos Doxiadis: »Ο Θείος Πέτρος και η Εικασία του Γκόλντμπαχ (Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture)
Apostolos Doxiadis: Ο Θείος Πέτρος και η Εικασία του Γκόλντμπαχ (Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture)
There are not many books on this site where mathematics plays a key role but this is the second Greek book I have read featuring the subject. Christos Papadimitriou , author of the the other one, wrote a book with the author of this book, which is available in English.
This book starts with a quotation by G H Hardy which is appropriate: Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not.
The narrator is the son of one of three brothers. The two youngest – the father and Uncle Anargyros, – very much look down on Petros, the oldest brother. Indeed they make sure their children do so as well. That no-good brother of mine, Petros, is one of life’s failures is what the father says of him. The three brothers had inherited a factory from their father, The two youngest run it though all three share in the profits. Petros lives in the country but, by tradition, they visit him every year on his name day. He lives on his own, unmarried, and seemingly with few friends. They go in the without any power tools.
The narrator is puzzled by his father’s criticism of his older brother. Petros seems nice and friendly and is never rude like his brothers. Unlike his brothers, he neither drinks nor smokes and, also unlike them, is in good physical shape. So what is the problem?
Our narrator decides to do a bit of sleuthing, By devious means he finds out that Uncle Petros is a superb chess player and a former professor of mathematics in Germany. When his father finds out that has been sleuthing he is annoyed but relents and decides to reveal all. Petros was a brilliant chess player and mathematician. He had been professor of mathematics at the University of Munich – the youngest ever – but had to leave when war broke out. Back in Greece he dud not fulfil his potential and the father had no doubt why – because of his obsession with Goldbach’s Conjecture. It basically states that every number above 2 is the sum of two primes. This has been tested to a very high number but no-one has managed to produce a general proof that applies to all even numbers. We learn early on what it is. Our narrator does not.
Out narrator is so impressed by his uncle”s dogged pursuit that he immediately focusses on maths and does very well at school and it has been decided that he will go to university in the United States. He tells Uncle Petros of his decision to study maths but Petros tries to put him off, telling him that, on the whole, maths as studied at University has no real world application. Petros makes a deal with him. If he can solve a maths problem he, Petros, will set him, he will study maths as a major. If he cannot solve it, he will study something else. We know that the problem is Goldbach’s Conjecture and of course he does not solve it.
However, once in the US, he shares a room with a mathematician, who tells him that his uncle has duped him. He writes a furious letter to his uncle and switches to maths.
Back in Greece he visits his uncle who explains that, perhaps inevitably, it is all because of a girl. His father had sent him t Berlin to study maths and he had stayed with friends of his father, who had a daughter, Isolde. The pair were attracted to one another but she soon turns her attention to a dashing army officer. He hopes, by solving Goldbach’s Conjecture, he can achieve fame and win her back. I must say that I do noit know many women who would be turned on by a man who had solved Goldbach’s Conjecture rather than by a dashing army officer and I feel that the author may have overestimated the lure of his profession.
We follow Petros’ career and how he focusses on Goldbach’s Conjecture and, of course, does not solve it. He spends time in Cambridge, UK, where he helps Britain win World War I. However he is still very much determined that it should be he who finds the proof for Goldbach’s Conjecture and no-one else. Accordingly, when offered a chair at Cambridge, he declines as he feels he would have to share what he discovered with others which he does not want to do. He also is in a hurry as he knows that nearly all great mathematical discoveries are made by young men. He gets the offer from Munich and continues to work in secret. He does make some advances but declines to publish in case someone else might take advantage of them. This turns out to be a mistake. Indeed he has no contact with any other mathematicians, which also turns out to be a mistake.
As we know he is back in Greece during the war but returns to Cambridge after the war, where he learns of Gödel‘s Incompleteness Theorems which essentially say that there are some mathematical problems that are insoluble. The person who tells him this is Alan Turing.
Meanwhile our narrator has abandoned maths and works for his father’s firm. He regularly visits Uncle Petros and learns a lot more about his obsession with Goldbach’s Conjecture and how and why his life turned out the way it did. His father had told him to set himself reasonable exaptations. Clearly Uncle Petros reached for the stars and failed to get there. As the narrator’s father states, his sin was pride. The only person fit to absolve Uncle Petros was I myself, for only I had understood the essence of his transgression. But one night our narrator gets a phone call from Uncle Petros. He urgently needs two mathematicians to verify what he has discovered.
I r really enjoyed this book as we get IUncle Petros” struggles and the point of view of the narrator who vacillates between his support for his uncle and his realisation that he had overreached himself. You do not need to know anything about maths to enjoy this book. It could have been about any supreme goal that the protagonist struggles to reach. Goldbach’s Conjecture had yet to be solved or, if it has, we do not know about it.
Publishing history
First published in 1992 by Ikaros
First English translation in 2000 by Faber & Faber
Translated by the author