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The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
Louis A.'s Recommendation for the 510 Club | February 2025
Simon Singh is a fantastic personality and author, famous for his take down of homeopathy and his enduring love of The Simpsons. I first encountered him and his gift for lucid explanation in The Code Book.
The book traces the development of encryption from ancient cultures to modern technology (as of 1999, when it was published). Following history allows the book to grow in sophistication organically as the reader learns.
The thing that stood out most for me from when I first read it in the early 2000's was the evolution of substitution ciphers from Caesar Ciphers to Enigma. Revisiting it now, I still enjoy Singh's prose.
A puzzler well versed in simple ciphers might not get much out of the book, but I hold that it is a fantastic primer on cryptography for an interested novice.
There are also some related resources linked from the author's website: https://simonsingh.net/cryptography
WHAT IS THE 510 CLUB?
The 510 Club is named after the Dewey Decimal classification for Mathematics. It is a book recommendation project facilitated by Mathateca in collaboration with Christchurch MathsJam. Each month we feature a mathematical book recommendation, whether that’s a novel, articles / essays, a puzzle book, textbook, biography... just as long as it features maths in some way. Read the above book at your leisure then feel free to comment your thoughts below, or come along to the following Christchurch MathsJam sessions to join in an informal maths/book chat with the reviewer.
We're always looking for suggestions! If you're interested in contributing a book rec one month, please email christchurch@mathsjam.com to sign up.
