Anatoliĭ Fomenko is a Soviet mathematician with a talent for expressing abstract mathematical concepts through artwork. Some of his works echo those of M. C. Escher in their meticulous rendering of shapes and patterns, while other pieces seem to be more visceral expressions of mathematical ideas. Stimulating to the imagination and to the eye, his rich and evocative work can be interpreted and appreciated in various ways—mathematical, aesthetic, or emotional.

This book contains 84 reproductions of works by Fomenko (23 of them in color). In the accompanying captions, Fomenko explains the mathematical motivation behind the illustrations as well as the emotional, historical, or mythical subtexts they evoke. The illustrations carry the viewer through a mathematical world consisting not of equations and dry logic, but of intuition and inspiration.

Since the mid-1970s, Fomenko has created more than 280 illustrations. Not only have his images filled pages of his own numerous books on geometry, but they have also been chosen to illustrate books on other subjects, such as statistics, probability, and number theory. In addition, his works have found their way into the Soviet scientific and popular press and have been displayed in more than 100 exhibits in the Soviet Union, Holland, India, and much of Eastern Europe.

Fomenko describes his images as “deep reflections about the essence of being and about the place of modern man—in particular, the learned man—in the stormy and unpredictable world surrounding him.” His illustrations are the product of a sensitive, aesthetically attuned mind diving deep below the surface of modern mathematics and emerging with great stories to tell.