Hardy: A Mathematician’s Apology

Hardy: A Mathematician’s Apology

You rarely get an insight into the workings of a mathematician mind. However in, A Mathematician’s Apology G.H Hardy gives an excellent account of what mathematics is. Its usefulness (or lack of) and how it is more than just a science it is a creative art!

The apology was written as his powers as a mathematician were on the decline. This detail offers the reader an insight into how Hardy viewed his career as a mathematician and how he viewed some of his contemporaries. He mentions his work with Littlewood, his discovery of Ramanujam and his time at Oxford and Cambridge.

Hardy gives a brilliantly composed account of ‘real’ mathematics and this comes from his background in pure mathematics. He was known as ‘a real mathematician’ and this style of thinking comes across in the well-constructed, eloquent argument he proposes for his subject. His dislike of war and the lack of involvement that mathematics has had upon it is displayed in the book. He acknowledges the use of applied mathematics on ballistics however he hardly ranks them as ‘real’. He further states that the mathematics involved are “indeed repulsively ugly and intolerably dull.” You can’t help but like the language he uses.

This book is a must for anyone (not just mathematicians) as it is not only fantastically written but it offers an insight into one of the finest mathematical minds of the twentieth century.