
Adam Kucharski is a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, an award-winning writer, and bestselling author of The Rules of Contagion, which was a Book of the Year in The Times, Guardian and Financial Times. A mathematician by training, his work on global outbreaks has included Ebola, Zika and COVID. He is in the top 0.1% of cited researchers globally, and he has advised multiple governments and health agencies. He is a TED senior fellow and winner of the University of Cambridge Adams Prize and the Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize. His writing has appeared in The Times, Observer, Financial Times, New Statesman and Wired, among others, and he has contributed to several documentaries, including BBC Horizon. He has spoken at venues like TED, Google and the Royal Institution, with his talks viewed over 6 million times online.
For the past 500 years, gamblers-led by mathematicians and scientists-have been trying to figure out how to pull the rug out from under Lady Luck. In The Perfect Bet, mathematician and award-winning writer Adam Kucharski tells the astonishing story of how the experts have succeeded, revolutionizing mathematics and science in the process. The house can seem unbeatable. Kucharski shows us just why it isn't. Even better, he demonstrates how the search for the perfect bet has been crucial for the scientific pursuit of a better world.