Math whiz Agnijo Banerjee talks about his new book, working with mentor David Darling

“I couldn't reply to you until now because I was in Tonbridge. I have been selected to represent the UK at the International Mathematical Olympiad which will be held at Romania in the first week of July,” read the email from 17-year-old Agnijo Banerjee, sent amid the maths genius’ attempts to divide his time between academics and publishing his first book.Agnijo, who was born in Kolkata and lived in the city until he was two, shot to fame in 2013 when, at the age of 12, it emerged that he has an IQ of 162 — the highest a human can score at the Mensa test. This is also the same IQ as Albert Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s.But he remains quite modest for a 17-year-old, and points out that he scored the highest in only one kind of test. “There is a wide range of different IQ tests and I got the highest possible score on the Mensa test. Different tests may be best suited for different ranges of IQ. However, I think intelligence is a much more complex thing than simply IQ, and is also much harder to measure. To be compared with Einstein and Hawking is completely unrealistic, as they are famous for what they have achieved in the field of science and not for their IQ. I am yet to make any groundbreaking contribution in my chosen field,” he said.[caption id="attachment_4629271" align="alignnone" width="825"] Agnijo Banerjee and David Darling[/caption]Five years later, the fame from the IQ test score is a thing of the past. Agnijo has completed school in the UK and is on his way to Cambridge to study pure mathematics, which he says he prefers to the ‘applied’ component of the subject. Before he moves on to college, he is currently busy spreading the word about Weird Maths: At the Edge of Infinity and Beyond, a book he co-authored with his mentor David Darling.In the words of Darling, the book tries to explain some of the most “interesting and unusual” aspects of maths — however obscure and technically difficult they may appear to be — in plain language to the layperson. He believes that “if we can’t explain something that’s hard in day-to-day language, then we don’t properly understand it ourselves". “We chose a variety of topics that are not commonly seen in similar maths books, but we decided from the very start that we would have to make everything accessible to the intelligent layperson — someone who isn't necessarily academically trained in mathematics but is interested in gaining some insight,” Agnijo said. Among other things, Darling says this book has tried to show that there are many intriguing philosophical questions to do with mathematics, and that it plays a fundamental role in the world around us.Unlike Agnijo, Darling has written several books before. He has been a freelance science writer for about 35 years, and has authored over 40 popular science books on various topics, including astronomy, physics, and mathematics. “I also do some private tutoring in my spare time in maths and physics. However, I’m first and foremost a science writer,” he insists. It is during his sessions as a private tutor that Darling met Agnijo about four years ago. At the time, when Agnijo was in his second year of high school and aged 13, he had just passed ‘Higher Maths’ with full marks – three or four years ahead of schedule, Darling said.At their first meeting, Darling lent Agnijo his copy of The Universal Encyclopedia of Mathematics – a comprehensive guide written for a mainly adult readership. He brought it back the next week, Darling said, having read it from cover to cover “and found several small mistakes that I’d overlooked”.“It was obvious at our first meeting that Agnijo had remarkable talents in mental maths, able to solve complex arithmetical problems in his head, and that he had a wide knowledge far beyond that which would normally be expected of a smart teenager,” Darling said. A couple of years later, the two decided to write a book together, where Agnijo would cover the more technical aspects of the maths, and Darling would try to put these in a form that the layperson would understand, along with historical and human interest elements.Months later, Weird Maths was born, which has garnered great interest from around the world. “So well has the book been received, and so many foreign rights has it sold it advance, that Weird Maths has now become a trilogy, with Weirder Maths due out at the start of 2019, and Weirdest Maths the following year!” Darling revealed.In his next annual visit to India, Agnijo will travel the country in July to promote the book. In one of his earlier visits, he met former president Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2014, much before Weird Maths was conceived. “Initially, I was awestruck by the whole thing (the history, the building, the meeting), but he quickly put me at ease by asking me to relax and tell him about my maths achievements. He told me never to forget my roots and to actively continue my links with India,” Agnijo said about this meeting.Weird Maths, written by Agnijo Banerjee and David Darling, is published by HarperCollins