“…delightful, insightful, informative…” I am thrilled with this review of Huge Numbers in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks to Siobhan Roberts for the review, including the slightly blush-inducing section about my “precision patter” narrating the audiobook.... 1/2 www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Erm, I am on the one hand excited that the Wall Street Journal has run a review of Huge Numbers, and on the other hand frustrated that not being a subscriber I cannot read it! Do I have any friends on here who can help?! www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

📣 Final lecture of the EMS Lecture Series on Mathematics Education 🗓️ 12 Jun 2026 • 19:00 CEST • Online 🎙️ Terence Tao: How should students control their AI diet? ▶️ Watch (live + replays): www.youtube.com/@EuropeanMat... #Mathematics #EMS #MathEducation #AI

"Fish 7?" @richardelwes.bsky.social, author of "Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7" (@basicbooksgroup.bsky.social), explains in this knowledge-expanding @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social History of Science podcast episode. #mathematics podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

Thank you to everyone who joined us for EMS Women in Mathematics Day 2026 last Friday! ✨ ▶️ The lectures by Kaisa Matomäki and Annalisa Buffa are available on the EMS YouTube channel for anyone who missed the event or would like to watch again. Watch the playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

We always enjoy our visits to the gem-rock museum in Creetown in Galloway. We also always leave carrying bags of assorted rocks from the gift-shop. This was my choice this time - a cube made of Tiger’s Eye quartz. 1/2

Most of the podcasts and interviews I've been doing recently have been fairly gentle conversations. But this New Books Network podcast with Gregory McNiff was a challenging one! Greg kept me on my toes with one big question after another! 1/2 newbooksnetwork.com/huge-numbers

I always enjoy helping out at careers' day at my kids' primary school. The best feedback I received today: Me: "...I also write books about maths, like this one." [Gestures at book.] Child: "Wow! You wrote all this yourself? You have such good handwriting!" 1/3

I’ve written more about statistics of the Guardian’s 100 best novels list, including: – Books that just missed out – Two errors in the data (Cather and Camus lost out) – Best novelists – Alternative rankings – Weirdest and least-weird ballots mpaldridge.github.io/blog/guardia...

The allure of ridiculously enormous numbers: I review "Huge Numbers" by @richardelwes.bsky.social, for @undark.org: undark.org/2026/05/15/b... #science #math #maths #mathematics

"Reading this book is a little bit like sitting in the back row of an auction house where a rare Picasso (let’s say) is up for grabs: How high is this thing going to go? And indeed, Elwes keeps going." undark.org/2026/05/15/b...

Thanks to Gayoung Lee at @gizmodo.com for this great write-up of a fun conversation!

Some important thoughts from @wtgowers.bsky.social on mathematical research in the age of AI. gowers.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/a...

at the 'stack, I break down my daughter's latest funny text and what it tells us about the background workings of chatbots backofmind.substack.com/p/a-master-a...

Here's me talking about Rubik's cubes on Numberphile. Ok fine, me talking about Rubik's cubes and Huge Numbers. How many different possible scrambles are there for puzzle cubes bigger than Rubik's classic? youtu.be/SAtFZPtbMpI?...

It was wonderful chatting to Lynne Ware Peek on KPCW's Cool Science Radio about Huge Numbers. www.kpcw.org/podcast/cool...

This is a great article in @quantamagazine.bsky.social about “ultrafinitism” - a (today) niche philosophical position in mathematics which rejects the reality of infinity and that of numbers bigger than those we can construct and handle directly. 1/2 www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-we-...

At first I was grumpy about this book by @richardelwes.bsky.social, because I wanted to write a book about big numbers myself someday. But this book is so entertaining and intelligent I couldn't stay upset for long. Enjoy it!

I had lots of fun on the @breakingmath.bsky.social podcast talking about Huge Numbers with @1autumnleaf.bsky.social. Thanks for inviting me on!

Today is publication day (US version) for Huge Numbers! Thanks to the team at @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social, and to my brilliant editor Thomas Kelleher, for helping me tell the world about the biggest numbers humans have ever contemplated.

After a book-swap with a fellow author, I am the proud owner of "Dermatology Essentials for General Practice" by the brilliant Dr Laura Manning. Recommended: an authoritative & strangely compelling account of the endless ways in which human skin can turn weird. scionpublishing.com/product/derm...

Ford Madox Ford once said: "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." It was fun applying the Page 99 Test to Huge Numbers. page99test.blogspot.com/2026/04/rich...

This is a lovely bit of science communication by Simon Goodwin - using maths to understand an unexplained phenomenon in snooker. youtu.be/ZVleTuJE1mU?...

Gorilla-boxing deserves to enter the canon, now that few people remember Pyrrhus or his victory.

Logicians worked out the logical rules on which arithmetic depends long ago. But there are some sequences of numbers that grow so fast, they break the rules and call into question the very foundations of maths. www.newscientist.com/article/2521...

Excited to publish my first article for @newscientist.com for over ten years. It’s on the subject of - you’ll never guess - huge numbers. www.newscientist.com/article/2521...

the Friday 'stack, where I ask what makes it feel so wrong to LLM generate a misery memoir? backofmind.substack.com/p/authentic-...

Did you know that there is a whole area of maths about knots? Students today are discovering all about it with Richard 🪢 #RFEEaster26

My son is teaching himself to solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded. Except he doesn’t have a blindfold, so he’s teaching himself to solve a Rubik’s cube with a cornflakes packet on his head.

We're super proud to host an extract of Richard Elwes' brilliant new book "Huge numbers". The article explores a fascinating Mayan #calendar with insights into the underlying notion of time and the #Maya way of writing numbers plus.maths.org/endless-prog... #maths #math #numbers

Also a massive shout out to @richardelwes.bsky.social for writing such a wonderful book. Very readable and informative. Highly recommended!

I’m reading a book on Huge Numbers. And this is an outstanding fact about each and every human: “This is what we are, from the perspective of particle physics: each of us a vast constellation of quarks, likely outnumbering stars in the observable universe at around a hundred octillion (10 exp 29)”

"I conceive the endless progress of time as the supreme mystery of Maya religion, a subject which pervaded Maya thought to an extent without parallel in the history of mankind." — Eric Thompson Click to read me on the staggering timescales the Maya contemplated. 1/2 plus.maths.org/endless-prog...

Always a pleasure to host the Carnival of Mathematics from The Aperiodical, especially when it's a lovely 5-smooth number like 250. Learn about perspective in paintings, the mystery of Unicode U+237C, and a tasty Fermi estimation problem - enjoy!

1. I think this is (mostly) right. 2. It’s reassuring that there are MPs out there thinking about serious problems as methodically as this. 3. I will post anything that advocates for the Leeds tram. chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/to-grow-th...

April has a lot to offer when it comes to popular science reading, promising to help us do everything from future-proof our brains courtesy of Hannah Critchlow, to get to grips with really big numbers, thanks to Richard Elwes

In a new book, mathematician Richard Elwes shares how mathematical boundaries have been broken time and time again, thanks to the creative explorers of the biggest numbers known. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/huge-numbers-book-math-googology

First media review for Huge Numbers! Emily Conover in Science News @sciencenews.bsky.social writes: "It’s a delightful survey of the field of googology, the study of large numbers.... It’s a joy to marvel at how boundaries have been broken time and again..." www.sciencenews.org/article/huge...

Me on Numberphile talking about - guess what - big numbers. "What are the biggest numbers ever contemplated?" What if someone had asked that question a few hundred years ago, before 20th century techniques? Very grateful to Brady for the nice book advert at the end! youtu.be/sJqceEImtew?...

A special moment when something which has been buzzing around your brain and computer for ages finally achieves a physical form!

This animated series is good also, much of it from the 1980s and in French. Once upon a time… Life 🌱- The kidneys youtu.be/Qn0nxgH0tCM?...

A question for your kids: What kind of body do you think they're in? 😉 (There's also the sequel Code:Black but I'd say it's probably less kid-friendly!)

"Cells at Work" is an amazing educational anime (currently available on Netflix). The setting is the inside of the human body, and the characters are anthropomorphized cells of the body. That may all sound very worthy, but two things make it stand out. 1/4 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cells_a...!

"For some unconscious parts of our animal brain, any number beyond four and a half is 'large'." To hear why this is true, listen to this free extract of the audiobook of Huge Numbers. Both print & audio versions are out next month and available for pre-order now. soundcloud.com/hachetteaudi...

Oh Ronnie. Bother. My book* coming out next month confidently asserts “The highest break achieved in tournament play is a ‘beyond perfect’ 148 by Jamie Burnett in 2004.” *Huge Numbers, Basic Books, available for preorder now! www.waterstones.com/book/huge-nu...

So, BlueSky, one of my passions is the study of tea in WW2. I need you to watch this oral history from three ex-tea ladies from the Bermondsey WVS. Because you could guess for ONE THOUSAND YEARS and you would not guess where it is going... #skystorians #history #tea

I have written a blogpost about the multiset coefficient, if that's the sort of thing you might be interested in. mpaldridge.github.io/blog/multise...

"Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein" I like the spirit of this article - worth taking some time to congratulate people who quietly made good decisions and then got on with life. Well done David Agus, Scott Aaronson, and Sean Carroll. www.science.org/content/arti...

My son has discovered a harder puzzle than solving a 4x4 Rubik’s cube: reassembling an exploded 4x4 Rubik’s cube. Harder, and less fun.

Thinking of my father who died a year ago today. I am grateful for this lovely obituary written by his friend Christopher McCall KC (admittedly with some input from me). www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may...