Mathematicians seldom concern themselves with politics. Nor do they enjoy stirring up trouble the way artists do. Baudelaire, the French poet sometimes called “the father of modern literature,” spent his whole life pursuing inspiration in noble ladies’ boudoirs. His unrestrained bohemian life ended in misery before the publication of Paris Spleen, his posthumous collection of prose poems. In this book he quotes Pascal, the seventeenth-century French mathematician and thinker, as saying: “Almost all our evils arise from being unable to stay in our rooms.” Probably because they are more inclined to remain in their rooms, mathematicians are more likely than artists to win the trust and friendship of kings and political rulers.