What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking
beyond the conventional answers--for the sake of truth, beauty, and
practical applications--this book offers an eclectic panorama of
the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the
twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly
diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture
sources.
Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as
the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and
Omar Khayyam to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck
and Robert Langlands, Michael Harris reveals the charisma and
romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait
of mathematics as a community united around a set of common
intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, he touches on a
wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for
the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were
born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are
asked to explain number theory at a dinner party?
Disarmingly candid, relentlessly intelligent, and richly
entertaining, "Mathematics without Apologies" takes readers on an
unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the
philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film
and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and
mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx,
and beyond."
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