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The Music of the Primes

Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics

By Marcus du Sautoy

(12)

| Hardcover | 9780066210704

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Book Description

Prime numbers are the atoms of arithmetic, the building blocks for all other numbers. In school, we are taught that a prime is one that cannot be divided evenly by any other number except one and itself. What we are not taught is that primes represent the most tantalizing mystery in the pursuit of human knowledge. How can one predict when the next prime number will occur? Is there a formula that could generate primes? Where is the pattern behind these elusive numbers? These questions have formed a riddle that has confounded mathematicians since the ancient Greeks. The answer would revolutionize the world of math, and much more.

Nearly 150 years ago, a German mathematician named Bernard Riemann came as close as anyone has ever come to solving this problem. In 1859 he presented a paper on the subject of prime numbers to the Berlin Academy. At the heart of his presentation was an idea -- a hypothesis -- that seemed to reveal a magical harmony between primes and other numbers. It was an idea that Riemann argued was very likely to be true. But after his death, his housekeeper burned all of his personal papers, and to this day, no one knows whether he ever found the proof.

By now, the Riemann Hypothesis has become the number one obsession for the world's leading mathematicians. Considered to be even more difficult and more important than Fermat's Last Theorem, Riemann's solution would serve as a periodic table in charting the entire mathematical universe. But it has implications that go far beyondmath. It is of tremendous importance in business, since prime numbers are the linchpin for security in banking and e-commerce. It is also the idea that brings together vastly different areas of science, with critical ramifications for Quantum Mechanics, Chaos Theory, and the future of computing. Pioneers in each of these fields are racing to crack the code, and a prize of one million dollars has been offered to the winner.

In this remarkable book, Marcus du Sautoy tells a story of eccentric and brilliant men, and of the unquenchable thirst for knowledge that has driven some to madness and others to glory. Illuminating, authoritative, and extremely engaging, The Music of the Primes provides the extraordinary history behind the holy grail of mathematics and the ongoing quest to capture it.

Critics

Million dollar question

The Music of the Primes: Why an unsolved Problem in Mathematics Matters by Marcus du Sautoy Fourth Estate £18.99, pp314 While academic subjects such as science, history and psychology have successfully descended from the ivory towers, and turned abst ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

Notes and numbers

The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy 352p, Fourth Estate, £18.99 In Paul Simon's 1983 song "When Numbers Get Serious", he drew attention to the common unease about the modern fixation with attaching numbers to things, even when it is downright ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

This is one of the best books about mathematics I have ever read. The author, Marcus Du Sautoy, a Math teacher at the Oxford University, is a great divulger, so everybody, reading his assay, can understand all the scientific notions which are contained in the book. It deals with one of the big-gest ... (continue)

This is one of the best books about mathematics I have ever read. The author, Marcus Du Sautoy, a Math teacher at the Oxford University, is a great divulger, so everybody, reading his assay, can understand all the scientific notions which are contained in the book. It deals with one of the big-gest unsolved problems of maths, that consists of finding an order to the sequence of the prime numbers. Du Sautoy makes the readers travel through the time and get very close to the most bril-liant minds that worked for long and with passion to solve this enigma. His great ability is to break the sequences that deal with a lot with mathematics inserting other kind of episodes, that general-ly describe a particular moment in the life of the protagonists, showing us their human and private aspects. In this way, the reading is never heavy, but it is lightened by these digressions. The writer can convey the enthusiasm of the mathematicians involved in this story and he got me much more interested and curious for the abstract world he described in his book.
(Sry for my bad English!)

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Andrea said on Oct 22, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Personally would have liked a bit more actual Maths, but still a very interesting read

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Jon Randy said on Oct 17, 2009 about the Paperback edition | 1 feedback