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An odd little book this: it is difficult to decide who Constance Reid had in
mind as her intended readership when she wrote Julia: A Life in Mathematics
(Mathematical Association of America, PO Box 91112, Washington DC 20090-1112,
$27, ISBN 0 88385 520 5). In a mixture of family photographs, facsimile
notes and interviews. The biographer, Julia Robinson’s sister, gives an account
of a life spent in mathematics from research at the Rand Institute on solutions
for the Prisoner’s Dilemma to solving the tenth problem set by David Hilbert.
This became Robinson’s life’s work, and the mathematics is seriously hard.