Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Jeremy Kepner is head and founder of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center (LLSC), and also a Founder of the MIT-Air Force AI Accelerator. Lincoln Laboratory is a 4000-person National Laboratory whose mission is to create defensive technologies to protect our Nation and the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the United States. Dr. Kepner is one of five Lincoln Laboratory Fellows, a position that "recognizes the Laboratory's strongest technical talent for outstanding contributions to Laboratory programs over many years." Dr. Kepner is recognized as one of nine MIT Fellows of the Society of Industrial Applied Mathematics (SIAM), for "contributions to interactive parallel computing, matrix-based graph algorithms, green supercomputing, and big data." 


I wrote

Mathematics of Big Data: Spreadsheets, Databases, Matrices, and Graphs

By Jeremy Kepner, Hayden Jananthan,

Book cover of Mathematics of Big Data: Spreadsheets, Databases, Matrices, and Graphs

What is my book about?

Today, the volume, velocity, and variety of data are increasing rapidly across a range of fields, including Internet search, healthcare,…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Fundamentals of Heavy Tails: Properties, Emergence, and Estimation

Jeremy Kepner Why did I love this book?

What do pandemics, climate change, extreme weather, financial crises, wealth inequality, and social media all have in common? They are all well described by heavy-tail statistics, which you may have never heard about and were almost certainly never taught in your introductory statistics class. The Fundamentals of Heavy Tails is the first text that attempts to close this gap in undergraduate STEM education. This well-written text is a wonderful blend of intuition and rigorous results. The reader will be pleasantly surprised to learn that heavy-tail distributions are neither rare nor mysterious and are a natural result of multiplicative random processes.

By Jayakrishnan Nair, Adam Wierman, Bert Zwart

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Fundamentals of Heavy Tails as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Heavy tails -extreme events or values more common than expected -emerge everywhere: the economy, natural events, and social and information networks are just a few examples. Yet after decades of progress, they are still treated as mysterious, surprising, and even controversial, primarily because the necessary mathematical models and statistical methods are not widely known. This book, for the first time, provides a rigorous introduction to heavy-tailed distributions accessible to anyone who knows elementary probability. It tackles and tames the zoo of terminology for models and properties, demystifying topics such as the generalized central limit theorem and regular variation. It tracks…


Book cover of Introduction to Algorithms

Jeremy Kepner Why did I love this book?

With over one million copies sold this may be the most popular computer science book in the world. This bedrock of computer science education is both a definitive textbook and reference book and is a must-have for anyone in the field of computer science. This latest edition is significantly updated and includes color throughout the text.

Book cover of Unix for the Beginning Mage

Jeremy Kepner Why did I love this book?

Unix/Linux has emerged as the most common operating system in the world. Found on almost every server, smartphone, and network-enabled device, Unix plays a critical role in all aspects of computing. Unix for the Beginning Mage is a fun introduction to Unix for the novice who may be intimidated by other texts.

By Joe Topjian,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Unix for the Beginning Mage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Boffin: A Personal Story of the Early Days of Radar, Radio Astronomy and Quantum Optics

Jeremy Kepner Why did I love this book?

A British term of endearment for a person engaged in scientific or technical research, Boffins have played a critical role in the development of our modern society. This book is the autobiography of the first Boffin who was essential in developing the radar system that won the Battle of Britain. Although nearly a century has passed, the “can-do” technical spirit of Boffins, Geeks, Nerds, and Hackers remains at the core of modern innovation.

By Robert Hanbury Brown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Boffin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An account of the history of radar, which traces its evolution and vital military role, particularly with regard to Britain's aerial victories in World War II.


Book cover of Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II

Jeremy Kepner Why did I love this book?

Perhaps an inspiration for Batman’s Bruce Wayne and Wayne Manner, Alfred Loomis’ Tuxedo Park mansion in a New York suburb was a hive of scientific innovation in the early days of radio. Inventor of EEG and ultrasound, Alfred Loomis would play a critical role in establishing the United States’ largest research laboratories: MIT Rad Lab (later Lincoln Lab), Los Alamos National Lab, and more which have conducted pioneering scientific innovation for generations. This biography by one of Loomis’ kin provides a unique insight into the development of modern “Big Science” in the United States.

By Jennet Conant,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Tuxedo Park as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the fall of 1940, as German bombers flew over London and with America not yet at war, a small team of British scientists on orders from Winston Churchill carried out a daring transatlantic mission. The British unveiled their most valuable military secret in a clandestine meeting with American nuclear physicists at the Tuxedo Park mansion of a mysterious Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis. Powerful, handsome, and enormously wealthy, Loomis had for years led a double life, spending his days brokering huge deals and his weekends working with the world's leading scientists in his deluxe private laboratory that was…


Explore my book 😀

Mathematics of Big Data: Spreadsheets, Databases, Matrices, and Graphs

By Jeremy Kepner, Hayden Jananthan,

Book cover of Mathematics of Big Data: Spreadsheets, Databases, Matrices, and Graphs

What is my book about?

Today, the volume, velocity, and variety of data are increasing rapidly across a range of fields, including Internet search, healthcare, finance, social media, wireless devices, and cybersecurity. Indeed, these data are growing at a rate beyond our capacity to analyze them. The tools—including spreadsheets, databases, matrices, and graphs—developed to address this challenge all reflect the need to store and operate on data as whole sets rather than as individual elements. This book presents the common mathematical foundations of these data sets that apply across many applications and technologies. Associative arrays unify and simplify data, allowing readers to look past the differences among the various tools and leverage their mathematical similarities in order to solve the hardest big data challenges.

Book cover of The Fundamentals of Heavy Tails: Properties, Emergence, and Estimation
Book cover of Introduction to Algorithms
Book cover of Unix for the Beginning Mage

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No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


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