359

BOOK REVIEWS
Edited by ANDY LIU
The Universe in a Handkerchief by Martin Gardner, published by Copernicus, an imprint of Springer-Verlag New York Inc., 1994, ISBN 0-387-94673-X, x+158 pages, US$19.00. Reviewed by Richard Guy, University of Calgary. A book by Martin Gardner is always welcome, and most mathematicians and many other people are interested in Lewis Carroll. Although it is almost a century since he died, there is still much to learn about him. Morton Cohen's biography 2 only appeared last year and Edward Wakeling's edition of Lewis Carroll's diaries 4 is still in process of appearing. The present book contains a bibliography of more than thirty items: and there is little overlap with the nearly fty items which relate to Carroll in John Fisher's book 3 . Many mathematicians are interested in word play of all sorts, and this makes up the major part of the book: Carroll's `Doublets' or `Word Links' are still a popular pastime: can you get from `Bread' to `Toast' with less than 21 links? But if you're looking for speci cally mathematical items, then they'll need picking out for you. The gravity-operated train from Sylvie and Bruno concluded. Carroll's attachment to, if not obsession with, the number 42. The Butcher's piece of algebra in Fit 5 of The Hunting of the Snark. The quadratic equation in the poem in Rhyme? and Reason? The puzzle of the monkey and weight over a pulley. John Conway's Doomsday Rule" for nding what day of the week any date falls on has its original inspiration from Lewis Carroll. Rhymes for remembering logarithms to seven decimal places. The Telegraph Cipher. The game of Arithmetical Croquet. Conjuring tricks depending on `casting out the nines'. Probability paradoxes which anticipate the `motor car and goats' debate of recent years. And mathematical recreations of all the traditional kinds, such as are listed in Rouse Ball 1 , the rst three editions of which appeared in Carroll's lifetime. It was probably in the fourth edition that Rouse Ball added a footnote to his geometrical fallacies, saying that `they particularly interested Mr. C. L. Dodgson; see the Lewis Carroll Picture Book, London, 1899, pp. 264, 266, where they appear in the form in which I originally gave them.' The following problem, from a letter by Carroll to Enid Stevens, was thought by Morton Cohen to be too ambiguously stated to have a precise answer: Three men, A, B and C , are to run a race of a quarter-ofa-mile. Whenever A runs against B , he loses 10 yards in every hundred; whenever B runs against C , he gains 10 yards in every hundred. How should they be handicapped?

360 Isn't the following a reasonable interpretation? For distances run in equal times, A : B = 90 : 100 and B : C = 110 : 100, so that

A : B : C = 99 : 110 : 100 = 396 : 440 : 400; and B should start from scratch, with C at the 40 yard mark and A at
44 yards.

Something I learned while reviewing this book, though not while reading it, and which Canadians might be particularly interested in, is that Carroll, with such de nitions as `OBTUSE ANGER is that which is greater than Right Anger', anticipated the ideas in Stephen Leacock's Boarding House Geometry. And where does the title come from? In Sylvie and Bruno concluded Mein Herr gives instructions, not in fact practicable in three dimensions, to Lady Muriel for sewing three handkerchiefs into the Purse of Fortunatus, which is a projective plane. Whatever is inside that Purse, is outside it; and whatever is outside it, is inside it. So you have all the wealth of the world in that leetle Purse!"

References
1 W. W. Rouse Ball & H. S. M. Coxeter, Mathematical Recreations & Essays, 12th edition, Univ. of Toronto Press, 1974. 2 Morton Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography, Knopf, New York, 1995. 3 John Fisher ed., The Magic of Lewis Carroll, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1975. 4 Edward Wakeling ed., Lewis Carroll's Diaries, Vols. 1, 2 & 3., Lewis Carroll Society, Luton, England, 1993, 1994, 1995.