Florin Diacu is a Professor of Mathematics and former Director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences at the University of Victoria. He is the author of Celestial Encounters, a history of ideas in the field of chaos theory. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Forthcoming:

Before Tragedy Strikes:
The Quest for Predicting Megadisasters
(Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press)

Published:

The Lost Millenium:
History's Timetables Under Seige
(Knopf Canada, 2005)

Celestial Encounters
(Princeton University Press, 1999)

Quotes:

About The Lost Millenium

“Diacu gives both sides of the argument fairly but the mere idea that the calendar may be out by as much as 1,000 years is staggering.”
     - The London Free Press

“A stimulating new book…. [Diacu has] a gift for framing complex ideas in ways anyone can understand.”
     - Toronto Star

“Intriguing…. [Diacu] set out to explore this controversy with an open mind…. His account is at its best when he wrestles with the many contradictions of both the accepted and revisionist chronologies…. He wades into celestial mechanics with a dizzying discussion of eclipses, astronomical calculations and algebraic formulas.”
     - The Globe & Mail

“[Diacu explores] the ideas of a maverick Russian mathematician named Anatoli Fomenko … [who] argues that time is out of joint…. It’s an understatement to call this idea revolutionary.”
     - Maclean’s

“Too many books arrive on bookshelves tricked out with more hype than they can justify; rare is the book for which no amount of hype can match its significance. Florin Diacu’s The Lost Millennium is just such a book, a slim but dense volume that makes a convincing case that everything we know about time may be wildly wrong. Diacu, a Romanian-born mathematician who teaches at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, has written an electrifying summary of a debate that’s been raging quietly in the worlds of history, astronomy and mathematics for decades, even centuries, on the idea that our conception of time, and the dates by which we mark the passing of history, might be drastically in error, by as much as a thousand years.”
     - Metro Toronto

“Diacu takes the position of high-sceptic in the middle of an epic, unfriendly disagreement between the conventions of western history and a renegade group of Russian mathematicians arguing that the Middle Ages never happened. But even with the understood history of civilization at issue, Diacu believes nothing at face value and questions everything on both sides. A fascinating read.”
     - Timothy Taylor

“What makes this book so remarkable is Diacu’s unstinting commitment to uncovering the truth. It is a superb exemplar of open, rigorous, yet eminently readable inquiry. It will fascinate anyone with an interest in how science is done or how history is constructed.”
     - Jan Zwicky