The Latin root of the word conjecture, conicere, means to throw things together. Think of Jackson Pollock splashing different paints onto a canvas and hoping for some kind of coherent result. In mathematics, the term refers to a proposition offered without definitive proof. These varied meanings make the word fitting to include in the title of Karen Olsson’s new book, The Weil Conjectures, an experimental, tantalizing hybrid of biography, memoir, and meditation.
This is the third and most ambitious volume from Olsson, a longtime Texas writer and former Texas Observer editor, who also authored Waterloo (2005) and All the Names (2015). The Weil Conjectures is a study of French sibling geniuses André Weil, a 20th-century mathematician famous for his conjectures, and Simone Weil, a philosopher and political activist. Arrested for draft evasion in 1940, André did some of his most intense work in a French prison, and Simone became a mystic before dying at 34 after refusing to eat, possibly as a form of political protest. Their extraordinary lives offer a biographer ample material.
