A Mathematician's Apology

I read G.H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology over the 4th of July break. The first third of the book consists of an interesting foreward by C.P. Snow. Whenever I read about the collaborations between Hardy and Ramanujan, I find myself wishing for a Merchant Ivory film on the subject. (Sadly, Ismail Merchant passed away in May).

Reading the thoughts of great men is always fascinating to me. I find far too little time for leisurely reading and the obligatory cliche holds, the one about too many books.

It's a sad finale for Hardy, a collection of a great mathematician's reflections:

"It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and to not talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians usually have similar feelings; there is no scorn more profound or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation is work for second rate minds..."

So it goes.

Most inspiring to me are the lines Hardy draws between mathematics and art. So few people seem to see the beauty. For too many people it seems math is little more than a necessary evil. Not to be missed are Hardy's classic discussions of the proofs of an infinity of primes and the irrationality of the square root of two.