Alan J. Cain · ‘Form & Number’ in print

Form & Number in print

31 December 2025

Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty is in print! Kind of. :-)

A correspondent with a bookbinding hobby emailed to say that they had printed and hand-bound the entire work. (They prefer to remain anonymous but have given me permission to post about their work.)

The photo shows the five volumes and a temporary slipcase.

A printed edition of ‘Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty’, bound into five volumes with green leather covers and visible white stitching. The volumes are placed into temporary slipcases. The left-hand first volume (front matter) is slim; the second and third volumes (parts I+II) are 5–6cm thick; the fourth and fifth volumes (part III and part IV+bibliography+index) are 2–3cm thick.

They chose to print the small-format version of F&N , which has the same content as the primary large-format version but uses a smaller page size and replaces sidenotes with footnotes, and so runs to something over 2000 pages.

The binding is

‘veg tanned leather (backed with washi paper) … sewn with a long stitch and link stitching for the changeovers using .8mm linen thread’.

It is printed on 80 gsm paper, and masses 1430 grams in total.

The first volume contains the front matter; the second, third, and fourth volumes respectively contain parts I (purely historical), II (themes relevant today), and III (mathematical beauty in natural science); the fifth volume contains part IV (reflections) and the bibliography and indexes.

My first reaction on seeing F&N printed and bound like this was amazement at the care and craftsmanship involved.

My second reaction was basically ‘Ye gods, did I really write all that?’ :-)