IAN STEWART is the 1995 recipient of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday medal for outstanding contributions to the public understanding of science. He is author of Does God Play Dice?, The Problems of Mathematics, Another Fine Math You've Got Me Into, Nature's Numbers, Life's Other Secret and Flatterland. He writes the "Mathematical Recreations" column of Scientific American and is mathematics consultant to New Scientist and to Encyclopedia Britannica. He has written articles for such magazines as Discover, New Scientist and The Sciences. He lives in London.

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