It may not be obvious to the casual observer that the fields of mathematics and literature have anything whatsoever to do with each other. Certainly other fields of human endeavor have proven more appealing to poets and writers, perhaps because they have been more comprehensible. However, mathematicians have inspired work from across the spectrum of literary arts - fiction, poetry, plays, and essays - and in some cases have even contributed to these arts themselves.

Few mathematicians since the Vedic scholars in India have been as concerned with the relationship of verse and mathematics. Their proofs and theorems were often written as poetry, with the structure and meter of the verse reflecting the numerical nature of their subject matter. Omar al-Khayyam was, in his own time, equally famous for his work in verse and for his mathematical reasoning, although he did not combine the...