LOSS OF CERTAINTY - REVIEW OF SURI AND BAL'S "A CERTAIN AMBIGUITY"

Every thinking human being tries to build his or her worldview from the store of his or her own experiences or by drawing upon one's reasoning powers or by drinking from the fount of existing wisdom and knowledge. Every human being has a personal philosophy of life and existence even if it were not as sophisticated as that of, say, Bertrand Russell.

Shakespeare has memorably stated: "There are more things in heaven and Earth,..., than are dreamt of in your philosophy." There may come a time in one's life when this worldview gets shattered and one desperately clings to some beliefs, any beliefs. As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum. Some may become devoutly religious, some may become atheists or agnostics, some may find solace in, say, Spinoza's philosophy or Nietzsche's philosophy.

LETTERS ABOUT MATH - REVIEW OF STEVEN STROGATZ'S "THE CALCULUS OF FRIENDSHIP"

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, USA and a well known popularizer of mathematics (along the lines of another great mathematics teacher Ian Stewart). I loved Strogatz's book Sync (2003) which dealt with the topic of synchronization of complex systems in a very readable manner. His research focuses on chaos and complexity and he is famous for coauthoring a 1998 Nature paper on "small-world" networks.

In his book The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life While Corresponding about Math (2009), Strogatz explores the thirty year correspondence he maintained with his high school math teacher Don Joffray.

A LIFE IN TEACHING PHYSICS - REVIEW OF LEWIN AND GOLDSTEIN'S "FOR THE LOVE OF PHYSICS"

As a teacher, I find the most challenging thing is to capture the interest of the students and ignite their creativity and imagination. Walter Lewin, former professor of physics at MIT, USA has been very successful at doing just that. A sampling of his video lectures on YouTube shows how easy it is to be seduced by his approach to teaching physics.

At the end of a long career at MIT, Walter Lewin, along with history professor Warren Goldstein, has written an utterly delightful book For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics (2011) which is almost as good as his video lectures.

THE FOUNDING OF FACEBOOK - REVIEW OF DAVID KIRKPATRICK'S "THE FACEBOOK EFFECT"

I first came to know about Facebook in early 2011 through my students at the university where I teach. I found that they were sharing my class notes and assignment questions on Facebook which was intriguing to me. I wished to know if it was deemed appropriate and "respectable" for a faculty member to be active on Facebook.

A CITADEL FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH - REVIEW OF JON GERTNER'S "THE IDEA FACTORY"

Journalist Jon Gertner has provided a meticulously detailed look at research in one of the world's best incubators of invention in his book The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (2012).

Bell Labs was set up in the 1920s as the research and development wing of AT&T. While a lot of routine development was carried out at Bell Labs to make telephony convenient and affordable, it was also a hub that catalyzed research that ushered in the electronic age.

THE PRIMACY OF ECONOMICS - REVIEW OF LIONEL SHRIVER'S "THE MANDIBLES"

Some novels bring out the truth better than most nonfiction books do. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957), for instance, showed how a nation could collapse if the correct economic policies were not followed. I read it 25 years ago as an engineering undergraduate and I was so profoundly impacted by it that I became a capitalist for life. This was the book that readily came to my mind when I read Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 (2016) recently.

CAPITALISM REBOOTED - REVIEW OF MACKEY AND SISODIA'S "CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM"

In 1970, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman wrote an essay in the New York Times entitled "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits". In this article Friedman criticized businessmen who make employees, communities and the environment their concern. He said, "Businessmen that take seriously their responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution...are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism."