Jurassic Park

Hardback
Paperback
Audio-Cassette

Jurassic Park ? A mathematical curiosity ??

If you've seen the film, you'll probably recall that there's a character in there, Dr Ian Malcolm, who's a mathematician. Other than that, the film dwells more on the adventure side of Jurassic Park, with little emphasis, if any at all, on the mathematics in the book.

Jurassic Park the book is as good a layman's introduction to Chaos Theory (or Complexity Theory, as it has become known) as you could wish. Through the character of Dr Malcolm, Michael Crichton goes into some pretty deep explanations of Chaos Theory and its application to the world.

Specifically, Dr Malcolm maintains throughout that Jurassic Park cannot work - Chaos Theory says so. Michael Crichton acknowledges his indebtedness to, amongst others, John von Neumann. For me, the mathematics in Jurassic Park made me want to read it again and again. (I also enjoyed the adventure !)