View source for Biography:Amir Aczel

{{short description|Israeli-born American lecturer in mathematics and the history of mathematics and science}} 
{{Infobox scientist
| name        = Amir D. Aczel
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| image       =   Amir Aczel.jpg
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| birth_place = Haifa, Israel
| death_date  = {{death date and age |2015|11|26|1950|11|06}}
| death_place = Nîmes, France
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| fields      = [[Mathematics]], [[History of mathematics|history of mathematics]], [[History:History of science|history of science]]
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| alma_mater  = [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]]<br/>[[Organization:University of Oregon|University of Oregon]]
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| known_for   = Being an author of popular books on mathematics and science
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'''Amir Dan Aczel''' ({{IPAc-en|ɑː|ˈ|m|ɪər|_|ɑː|k|ˈ|s|ɛ|l}};<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9M0V_u5_1s Why Science Does Not Disprove God]<!--at 1:14--></ref> November 6, 1950<ref name=nytobit>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/science/amir-aczel-author-of-scientific-cliffhanger-dies-at-65.html|title=Amir Aczel, Author of Scientific Cliffhanger, Dies at 65|last=Grimes|first=William|date=2015-12-07|work=The New York Times|access-date=2020-01-04|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> – November 26, 2015) was an Israeli-born American lecturer in [[Mathematics|mathematics]] and the [[History of mathematics|history of mathematics]] and science, and an author of popular books on mathematics and science.

== Biography ==
Amir D. Aczel was born in Haifa, Israel. Aczel's father was the captain of a passenger ship that sailed primarily in the [[Place:Mediterranean Sea|Mediterranean Sea]]. When he was ten, Aczel's father taught his son how to steer a ship and navigate. This inspired Aczel's book ''The Riddle of the Compass''.<ref>Richard Bernstein, "The Invention that Led Sailors Not to Feel at Sea," The New York Times, Sept. 5, 2001 [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/05/books/books-of-the-times-the-invention-that-led-sailors-not-to-feel-at-sea.html]</ref> Amir graduated from the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, in 1969.

When Aczel was 21, he studied at the [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]]. He graduated with a BA in [[Mathematics|mathematics]] in 1975, and received a Master of Science in 1976. Several years later Aczel earned a [[Ph.D.]] in [[Statistics|statistics]] from the [[Organization:University of Oregon|University of Oregon]].

Aczel taught mathematics at universities in {{wipe|California}}, [[Earth:Alaska|Alaska]], {{wipe|Massachusetts}}, Italy, and Greece. He married his wife Debra in 1984 and had one daughter, Miriam, and one stepdaughter. He accepted a professorship at Bentley College in {{wipe|Massachusetts}}, where he taught classes on statistics and the [[History:History of science|history of science]] and [[History of mathematics|history of mathematics]]. He authored two textbooks on statistics. While teaching at Bentley, Aczel wrote several non-technical books on mathematics and science, as well as two textbooks. His book, ''Fermat's Last Theorem'' ({{ISBN|978-1-56858-077-7}}), was a United States bestseller and was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Aczel appeared on CNN, {{wipe|CNBC}}, The History Channel, and Nightline. Aczel was a 2004 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Visiting Scholar in the History of Science at [[Organization:Harvard University|Harvard University]] (2007), and was awarded a Sloan Foundation grant to research his 2015 book ''Finding Zero'' ({{ISBN|978-1-137-27984-2}}). In 2003, he became a research fellow at the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science, and in Fall 2011 was teaching mathematics courses at [[Organization:University of Massachusetts Boston|University of Massachusetts Boston]]. He was a speaker at La Ciudad de las Ideas (The City of Ideas), Puebla, Mexico, in [https://ciudaddelasideas.com/videos/the-magic-of-probability-amir-aczel-cdi-2008/ 2008], [https://ciudaddelasideas.com/videos/cdi-the-origins-of-the-future-13/ 2010] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200923152255/https://ciudaddelasideas.com/videos/cdi-the-origins-of-the-future-13/ |date=2020-09-23 }}, and 2011. He died in Nîmes, France in 2015 from cancer.<ref name=nytobit/>

== Works ==
*''Complete Business Statistics, 8th Edition, 2012.''  {{isbn|978-1935938187}}
*''Statistics: Concepts and Applications, 1995''. {{isbn|978-0256119350}}
*''How to Beat the I.R.S. at Its Own Game: Strategies to Avoid and Fight an Audit'', 1996. {{ISBN|978-1-56858-048-7}}
* ''Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem'', 1997. {{ISBN|978-1-56858-077-7}}<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/16/books/finding-buried-treasure-in-beautiful-mathematics.html|title=Finding Buried Treasure in Beautiful Mathematics|last=Bernstein|first=Richard|date=1996-12-16|work=The New York Times|access-date=2020-01-04|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
* ''God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe'', 1999. {{ISBN|1-56858-139-4}}<ref>{{cite web|title=Review of ''God's Equations: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe'' by Amir D. Aczel|date=October 1999|website=Publishers Weekly|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56858-139-2}}</ref>
* ''The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity'', 2000. {{ISBN|1-56858-105-X}}
* ''Probability 1: The Book That Proves There Is Life In Outer Space'', Harvest Books, January 2000. {{ISBN|0-15-601080-1}}.
* ''The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World'', 2001. {{ISBN|0-15-100506-0}}
* ''Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics'', 2002. {{ISBN|978-1-56858-232-0}} and {{ISBN|978-0-452-28457-9}}<ref>{{cite web|title=Review of ''Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics'' by Amir D. Aczel|website=Publishers Weekly|date=October 2003|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56858-232-0}}</ref>
* ''Pendulum: Léon Foucault and the Triumph of Science'', 2003. {{ISBN|0-7434-6478-8}}
* ''Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, and the Stock Market'', 2004. {{ISBN|1-56858-316-8}}
* ''Descartes' Secret Notebook: A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to Understand the Universe'', 2005. {{ISBN|0-7679-2033-3}}
* ''The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed'', 2007. High Stakes Publishing, [[Place:London|London]]. {{ISBN|1-84344-034-2}}.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Yogananda, C. S.|title=Review of ''The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed'' by Amir D. Aczel|date=June 2015|journal=Resonance|pages=556–559|doi=10.1007/s12045-015-0214-3|s2cid=124693794|url=http://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/reso/020/06/0556-0559}}</ref>
* ''The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man'', 2007. {{ISBN|978-1-594-48956-3}}
* ''Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry that Created the Nuclear Age'', 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-230-61374-4}}
* ''The Cave and the Cathedral: How a Real-Life Indiana Jones and a Renegade Scholar Decoded the Ancient Art of Man'', 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-470-37353-8}}
* ''Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider'', 2010. {{ISBN|978-0-307-59167-8}} {{cite book|title=Present at the Creation: Discovering the Higgs Boson|edition=updated|year=2012|isbn=9780307591821|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nMALF3O6qggC|last1=Aczel|first1=Amir D.}}
* ''A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of the Great Mathematicians'', 2011. {{ISBN|978-1-4027-8584-9}}
* ''Why Science Does Not Disprove God'', 2014. {{ISBN|978-0-062-23061-4}}<ref>{{cite news|author=Lightman, Alan|date=10 April 2014|title=Book review: 'Why Science Does Not Disprove God' by Amir Aczel|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-why-science-does-not-disprove-god-by-amir-d-aczel/2014/04/10/4ee476ec-a49e-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html}}</ref>
* ''Finding Zero'', 2015. {{ISBN|978-1-137-27984-2}}
* {{cite book|last1= Ono |first1= Ken |last2= Aczel|first2= Amir D. |title= My Search for Ramanujan: How I Learned to Count |date= 2016-04-13 |publisher= [[Company:Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |isbn= 978-3319255668 }}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* {{MathGenealogy |id=191950|title=Amir Aczel}}
* {{C-SPAN|91356}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Aczel, Amir}}
[[Category:Historians of mathematics]]

{{Sourceattribution|Amir Aczel|1}}