recommend this book to those who are passionate about the history of mathematics, the focus here is placed on some of the greatest mathematicians who lived between the eighteenth and the twentieth century, including Enrico Bombieri, Euler Pierre de Fermat, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Kurt Gödel, GH Hardy, David Hilbert, JE Littlewood and Srinivasa Ramanujan, as well as Bernhard Riemann in the same world that defied mathematicians leaving one of the most feared hypothesis that still holds the mystery of prime numbers.
Description taken from rcslibri.corriere.it :
" A wonderful book! Hugely enjoyable. "Oliver Sacks
" Du Sautoy intertwined with the history of ideas, anecdotes and personal stories of the protagonists of science, a blend that makes it attractive on a tricky otherwise. Even those who feel a certain allergy in mathematics, find great enjoyment in the company of characters this book. "
Martin Rees, The Times
In 1866, while the Prussian army entered in Gottingen, the greatest German mathematician Bernhard Riemann hastily left the city to take refuge in the beloved Italy, abandoning pages and pages of notes that a diligent housekeeper too hurried to burn. Among those papers was hiding lost perhaps the solution to an age-old riddle: the mystery of prime numbers. Rational universe of mathematics, prime numbers, that is only divisible by themselves and 1, another with an elusive rhythm, seemingly illogical: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29 , 31 ... It seems that nature has chosen them at random. But numbers are not any, are the "atoms of arithmetic, the basic elements used to construct all other natural numbers. Seizing an order in their sequence, to find a rule that you can determine what is, for example, the billionth prime number, would have fundamental implications, not only for mathematics.
So the idea that Riemann had made seven years before escaping from Göttingen is still so important, if true, means that in that dark cherebbe basis of numbers lies a carefully designed, full of consequences. But after a century and a half no one has yet been able to prove it. Who could now ensure, in addition to undying fame, the prize of one million dollars that recently an American entrepreneur in love with math put at stake. Just as the Riemann hypothesis in this book Marcus Du Sautoy presented with exemplary clarity the major unsolved puzzles solved and the world of prime numbers, explaining what their actual importance in fields like quantum physics and computer security.
To do the story and the amazing adventures (not just intellectual) of the great mathematicians who in every age have gone into that mysterious territory. By Euclid, in the fourth century BC, proved the existence of infinitely many primes, up to today's followers of the work of Riemann, Pavia as the mathematician Enrico Bombieri, this is the story of eccentric and brilliant men and women, who share the same obsession and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
0 comments:
Post a Comment