On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries.

The Rockmore theorem made its first—and perhaps only—named appearance in print in 1977, in the journal Physics Letters, Volume 72B, No. 4. A photocopy of the journal page hung on my father’s office ...

“You don’t have to believe in God, but you have to believe in The Book,” the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős once said. The Book, which only exists in theory, contains the most elegant proofs of ...