Simon - The Genius in My Basement

The Genius in My Basement is Alexander Masters' biography of Simon Phillips Norton — a child-prodigy mathematician who, by his twenties, had helped map one of the strangest objects in mathematics, the ‘Monster’ group, and then quietly vanished into the basement of a Cambridge house.

Masters rented the flat upstairs. The book is the portrait of an extraordinary mind and an unlikely friendship, written with the same warmth and curiosity as Stuart.

Simon Phillips Norton: Travelling by Numbers

by Alexander Masters. Daily Telegraph (U.K.), 8 August 2008. In this article, author Alexander Masters describes a portion of a three-week boat and train trip he took to the Arctic Circle last year with the subject of a future book: mathematician Simon Phillips Norton. Masters sc…

Reviews of Simon: The Genius in My Basement

Recent reviews and features: Book of the Week in The Times and The Week The Sunday Times: Alexander Masters and his eccentric landlord make an unexpectedly perfect combination in this glorious study of an oddball prodigy Daisy Goodwin writes that The Genius in my Basement is an '…