The latest addition to my website is Apostolos Doxiadis‘ Ο Θείος Πέτρος και η Εικασία του Γκόλντμπαχ (Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture). The narrator has an uncle Petros who leads a solitary life and is despised by his two younger brothers for being a failure. The narrator does some sleuthing and finds out that Uncle Petros was a superb chess player and had been a professor of mathematics in Munich. He gradually digs out the story from his uncle and learns that he was determined to solve one of the great unsolved mathematical problems, a general proof for Goldbach’s conjecture which states that every even number above 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. Petros meets other great mathematicians in Cambridge but is determined to keep all his findings to himself so shares nothing and ends up a recluse. He tells everything to his nephew who starts out studying maths but changes tack and ends up joining the family business, while keepoing in touch with Petros and learning what lay behind his quest. Then one night Petros summons him with great news… This is a fascinating account of a man trying to reach the stars and then failing.