Robert Kaplan

Robert Kaplan (1933–2021) taught mathematics to students ranging in age from four to seventy, as well as philosophy, Greek, German, Sanskrit, and Inspired Guessing. After a long career at several independent schools and at Harvard University, he and his wife Ellen founded The Global Math Circle, a program that teaches the enjoyment of pure mathematics. He was the author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero (Oxford University Press, 2000), and, with Ellen, The Art of the Infinite: The Pleasures of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2003), Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Hidden Harmonies: The Lives and Times of the Pythagorean Theorem (Bloomsbury, 2012). He was also a prolific writer of philosophy, essays, fiction, and especially poetry.