Can you name any practising mathematicians? Unlike the world of theoretical physics, which can boast household names like Steven Hawking, maths is seen as a closed and arcane world. Asked to name a mathematician most people are likely to name Pythagoras and Euclid rather than someone like Andrew Wiles, who finally cracked Fermat’s Last Theorem and was the subject of several books and TV programs. All of this is a shame, of course, because it’s mathematics which drives the work of theoretical physicists.
Paul Erdos was one of the most prolific and inventive mathematicians of the twentieth century. In many ways he was the archetypal ‘nutty professor’. He was a man so deeply mired in his subject that everyday things, like negotiating his way around a kitchen, were beyond him. The book re-tells numerous stories of his accidents and his total inability to cope with the everyday and the mundane.
Like Singh’s ‘Fermat's Last Theorem’, Paul Hoffman uses his book as a way of detailing some of the great mathematical topics of the last couple of millennia. Ranging from simple geometry to Godel’s undecidability theorem to the Fermat problem it makes for fascinating reading, even if your maths knowledge is non-existent. You have to be prepared to work at it though, skipping the difficult bits may mean that you some of the Erdos story becomes meaningless.
At the end of the day this is less of a biography and more of a lay-persons guide to modern mathematics. In this respects it has a lot in common with ‘Fermat's Last Theorem’. Though if you haven't read either of the books, then 'Fermat...' is the one to go for.
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