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Blueprints

How Mathematics Shapes Creativity

New Release

Contributors

By Marcus Du Sautoy

Read by Mark Elstob

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Sep 9, 2025
Publisher
Hachette Audio
ISBN-13
9781668652879

Price

$31.99

Format

Format:

  1. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $31.99
  2. ebook $19.99 $25.99 CAD
  3. Hardcover $32.00 $42.00 CAD

An Oxford mathematician, playwright, and musician reveals how creative people can harness the profound and productive relationship between mathematics and the arts  
 
When Shakespeare has the Three Witches cast Macbeth’s lot, he uses something very weird to do it: not simply “eye of newt and toe of frog,” but the number seven. And when Hamlet claims, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Shakespeare reaches for eleven. For Shakespeare, prime numbers were magical. And he is not alone. 
 
As Marcus du Sautoy showcases in Blueprints, creativity is inseparable from mathematics. The designs of Le Corbusier and Leonardo; the music of Glass, Bach, and Debussy; the wild visions of Dali, the choreography of Laban, the animation of Pixar—all are shot through with mathematics, from primes and fractals to the weirder worlds of Hamiltonian cycles and hyperbolic geometry. And Du Sautoy argues that the relationship runs both ways. Just as mathematics inspires new art, the artistic mindset is a necessity for discovering new mathematics.  
 
Blueprints will expand your mind, but more importantly, it shows how to ignite your imagination. Anyone who wants to create needs this book. 

Marcus Du Sautoy

About the Author

Marcus du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford where he holds the prestigious Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science and is a Fellow of New College.
Du Sautoy has received a number of awards for his work including the London Mathematical Society’s Berwick Prize for outstanding mathematical research and the Royal Society of London’s Michael Faraday Prize for ‘excellence in communicating science’. He has been awarded an OBE for his services to science and was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

His mathematical research has covered a great many areas including group theory, number theory and model theory, but he has been equally successful in his promotion of mathematics to the general public. He has published a number of best-selling, non-academic books and appears regularly on television and radio.

Learn more about this author