Product Description

In 1859 Bernhard Riemann, a shy German mathematician, wrote an eight-page article, suggesting an answer to a problem that had long puzzled mathematicians. For the next 150 years, the world's mathematicians have longed to confirm the Riemann hypothesis. So great is the interest in its solution that in 2001, an American foundation offered a million-dollar prize to the first person to demonstrate that the hypothesis is correct. Karl Sabbagh's book paints vivid portraits of the mathematicians who spend their days and nights on the race to solve the problem.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44067 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Karl Sabbagh points out in Dr Riemann's Zeros prime numbers reveal their true magic in combination. Every even number can be obtained by adding together two prime numbers. And all non-primes can be obtained by multiplying two smaller prime numbers. This is a book about mathematics, not about the sorts of calculations and formulae we learned (and promptly forgot) at school. It is about a sphere of endeavour whose "glorious achievements...are less accessible than those of almost any other aspect of human culture." So while, at one level, Sabbagh's book is about how we look for prime numbers, his other, rather mordant accomplishment, is to show how wrong we non-mathematicians are, when we try to imagine what 'real' maths looks like.

Sabbagh's own mathematical gifts are just enough to give him glimpses of the subject's beauty. This beauty, he argues, is as real and vivid! as a phrase in music, or a curve in painting--but to perceive it requires a rare sort of imagination. A one-eyed man writing for a blind (non-mathematical) audience, Sabbagh's frustration enlivens his writing and adds tremendous poignancy to his difficult and worthwhile account. Part-biographical and part mathematical, Dr Riemann's Zeros describes a mathematical landscape whose navigation requires so many good ideas, it tests not just the ingenuity of the individual mathematician, but the soundness, communicativeness, and aggregated wisdom of a whole (largely invisible) culture. --Simon Ings

About the Author
Popular science fans: readers of Simon Singh's The Code Book and Fermat's Last Theorem; Sylvia Nasser's A Beautiful Mind, the books of Stephen Hawking, Ian Stewart and Martin Rees.

Customer Reviews

A disappointment
I stopped reading this rather fast: it had errors in it, and while a lovely story for the non-mathematician, for anyone who knows and loves mathematics (and who else really does buy these books?) it's really rather frustrating that, after a few chapters, you're still not much clearer on what Reimann's Hypothesis really is.

Not worth the money: try The Music of the Primes (utterly brilliant) instead. This book simply cannot begin to compete.

Reimann Hypothesis
A a fascinating subject matter, however ultimately I was disappointed by this book. I thought the initial introduction to the “Riemann Hypothesis” is well constructed. The book then seems to almost randomly jump from one mathematician to the next as the author interviews them. The writings are definitely humerous but they lack any depth in making a connection to the original hypothesis and there is too much irrelevant material presented about the peculiarities of the mathematics in question. For examples jokes, songs and witty quotations. Although sometimes funny, for the most part they are tiresome and boring. Lastly there is absolutely no historic information about Riemann himself (yes the book is about him I check the cover!). I thought it strange that the author described in great detail over 10 mathematicians but excluded Riemann. How did Reimann start off? why did he get interested in Prime Numbers? What did the hypothesis mean to him?

The scientific implications of the hypothesis (which would have made fascinating reading) are barely touched upon, e.g the connection with Quantum Mechanics, the implications to encryption codes etc.

There is a book covering the same material, called “Prime Obsession” by John Derbyshire which is far superior to this book, sorry....

An interesting account
This book gives an insightful account, not into the Riemann hypothesis or zeta function itself, but rather the mathematicians and their incomprehensible attempts to solve the greatest of greatest mathematical problems.
The Riemann hypothesis itself is only dealt with on a basic level, but nevertheless, I now know more about it today than I did yesterday. Fascinatingly, the appendix contains a proof put forward by de Branges (he proved the Bieberbach Conjecture) and has yet to be taken seriously by any of the mathematicians working on the hypothesis.
All in all, this is a good review of the current state of thinking regarding the Riemann hypothesis and makes interesting reading.