At the end of the eighteenth century, two brilliant and eccentric young scientists set out to measure the world. Alexander von Humboldt swashbuckled his way across the globe: navigating ocean and jungle, eating with cannibals, swimming with electric eels, lowering himself into volcanoes and scaling the highest mountain known to man. Carl Friedrich Gauss, on the other hand, stayed at home, using the power of thought to battle his way into exotic mathematical realms and the landmark realization that space is curved. Measuring the World brings these two geniuses to life, capturing their balancing act between loneliness and love, absurdity and greatness, failure and success.
Accolades
Shortlisted for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008.
Author Biography
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and moved to Vienna in 1981, where he studied philosophy and literature at university. Measuring the World is his fifth novel.
