Alex Bellos

Alex Bellos (born 1969) is a British writer and broadcaster. He is the author of books about Brazil and mathematics, as well as having an online column in The Guardian.

Alex Bellos was born in Oxford and grew up in Edinburgh and Southampton. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was the editor of the student paper Cherwell. His father, David Bellos, is a translator and academic.

During a five-year stint (1998–2003) as South America correspondent of The Guardian, he wrote the book Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life. The book was well received in the UK, where it was nominated for sports book of the year at the British Book Awards. In the US, it was included as one of Publishers Weekly's books of the year. They wrote: “Compelling...Alternately funny and dark...Bellos offers a cast of characters as colorful as a Carnival parade”. In 2006, he ghostwrote Pelé: The Autobiography, about the soccer player Pelé, which was a number one best-seller in the UK.

Returning to live in the UK, Bellos decided to write about mathematics. The book Alex's Adventures in Numberland came out in 2010 and spent four months in the Sunday Times' top ten best-sellers' list. The Daily Telegraph described the book as a "mathematical wonder that will leave you hooked on numbers." The book was shortlisted for three awards in the UK, including the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2010.The Guardian reported that Bellos's book was narrowly beaten into second place. Chairman of the judges Evan Davis broke with protocol to discuss their deliberations: "[Bellos's] was a book everyone thought would be nice if it won, because it would be good for people to read a maths book. Some of us wished we'd read it when we were 14 years old. If we'd taken the view that this is a book everyone ought to read, then it might have gone that way."

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