Sometime back, on a boring weekend I strolled in Crossword and bought a book on impulse. And ever since then I had a struggle finishing it. It is a book on Riemann Hypothesis, one of the seven unsolved problems which carry a prize tag by the Clay Institute of Mathematics.
Wait, before I go any further, I anticipate the question what the heck I'm doing reading a book on mathematics and that too a book on one of the unresolved problems. Also, people who know me would wonder what in this world made me, a dunce when it comes to mathematics, take up this book.
The book by Karl Sabbagh gives a layman level intro to the Riemann hypothesis. Don't ask me to explain the hypothesis. I've read it but I cannot lecture on it. It's all for intelligent nodding, remember? I am not supposed to spout formulae. Well, the reason I purchased it because, three years back, I chanced upon a book on Fermat's theorem and how the Fermat Theorem was proved by Andrew Wiles. That book by Simon Singh (if I remember correctly, I am not sure) went at a blistering pace, the narrative similar to a thriller fiction. That made me buy this book and I then found that this book doesn't have the same pace, but still okay. Actually this book narrates the history behind the hypothesis and the ongoing struggle to prove or disprove the hypothesis interestingly.
The Riemann Hypothesis, if true, proves that there is a rule for generating the prime numbers, the building blocks of all other numbers. At the moment it cannot be proved that such a rule operates. The distribution of prime numbers in the long list of whole numbers do not fit to any pattern and look random.
But Bernhard Riemann identified a mathematical function, now called the Riemann zeta function which is a sum of series whose expression involves complex numbers. This Riemann zeta function generates an infinite set of numbers called the zeroes of the function which describe the prime number distribution. Too abstract, atleast for me.The book assumes that the reader is pretty ignorant about Mathematics, which is fine by me for the most part.
But at times the author takes this too far when he explains what a numerator and a denominator are! I recommend this book for readers like me, once badly bitten (by mathematics) but not shy.
Title: The Riemann Hypothesis-The Greatest Unsolved problem in Mathematics
Author: Karl Sabbagh
Publishers: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY.
PS:- one more reason for picking this book was the movie "The Beautiful Mind" (on mathematics)
