I am hoping that this is the appropriate forum to post this question, which is, unfortunately, rather vague …
From my early twenties, I have always been fascinated by what might be termed “recreational mathematics”. I went to school back in the sixties, and I really really hated my math classes , it was an interminable learning by rote of trigonometrical and algebraic formulae, with bugger all relevance to anything in the real world as far as I could determine at the time. Later on, of course, I was to discover that trig and geometry were actually indispensable in the real world of manufacturing and engineering, but I also discovered that there was a beauty in mathematics itself which didn’t necessarily require justification on any "practical " level.
Thing is, I remember, in the early seventies, going to our local library on a Saturday morning, and reading this book in the reference section (ie non-lending) which absolutely enthralled me, it portrayed mathematics in a most interesting, accessible way, but … I cannot remember the title, and I cannot remember the name of the author or the publisher.
What I do recall is that the book was written by a woman, and I also recall that she had a mid-European sounding name, maybe Hungarian or Polish, and I seem to recollect that her first name might have begun with an “R”.
More than that I cannot remember, and I know that this is a really long shot, and for all I know the book may well be (and probably is) long out of print by now, but if these few scraps of info can jog anybody’s memory, I figured that this forum would be the place to track the book down.
It would be amazing if I were able to buy a copy after all these years …