Author: Jeremy Gray

“Plato’s Ghost” is the first book to examine the development of mathematics from 1880 to 1920 as a modernist transformation similar to those in art, literature, and music.

Jeremy Gray traces the growth of mathematical modernism from its roots in problem solving and theory to its interactions with physics, philosophy, theology, psychology, and ideas about real and artificial languages. 

He shows how mathematics was popularized, and explains how mathematical modernism not only gave expression to the work of mathematicians and the professional image they sought to create for themselves, but how modernism also introduced deeper and ultimately unanswerable questions.