A Mathematician's Apology is a profoundly sad book, the memoir of a man who has reached the end of his ambition, who can no longer effectively practice the art that has consumed him since he was a boy. But at the same time, it is a joyful celebration of the subject--and a stern lecture to those who would sully it by dilettantism or attempts to make it merely useful. "The mathematician's patterns," G.H. Hardy declares, "like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."
Hardy was, in his own words, "for a short time the fifth best pure mathematician in the world" and knew full well that "no mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game." In a long biographical foreword to Apology, C.P. Snow (now best known for The Two Cultures) offers invaluable background and a context for his friend's occasionally brusque tone: "His life remained the life of a brilliant young man until he was old; so did his spirit: his games, his interests, kept the lightness of a young don's. And, like many men who keep a young man's interests into their sixties, his last years were the darker for it." Reading Snow's recollections of Hardy's Cambridge University years only makes Apology more poignant. Hardy was popular, a terrific conversationalist, and a notoriously good cricket player.
When summer came, it was taken for granted that we should meet at the cricket ground.... He used to walk round the cinderpath with a long, loping, clumping-footed stride (he was a slight spare man, physically active even in his late fifties, still playing real tennis), head down, hair, tie, sweaters, papers all flowing, a figure that caught everyone's eyes. "There goes a Greek poet, I'll be bound," once said some cheerful farmer as Hardy passed the score-board.
G.H. Hardy's elegant 1940 memoir has provided generations of mathematicians with pithy quotes and examples for their office walls, and plenty of inspiration to either be great or find something else to do. He is a worthy mentor, a man who understood deeply and profoundly the rewards and losses of true devotion. --Therese Littleton
G. H. Hardy was one of this century's finest mathematical thinkers, renowned among his contemporaries as a 'real mathematician ... the purest of the pure'. He was also, as C. P. Snow recounts in his Foreword, 'unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything'. This 'apology', written in 1940 as his mathematical powers were declining, offers a brilliant and engaging account of mathematics as very much more than a science; when it was first published, Graham Greene hailed it alongside Henry James's notebooks as 'the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist'. C. P. Snow's Foreword gives sympathetic and witty insights into Hardy's life, with its rich store of anecdotes concerning his collaboration with the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan, his aphorisms and idiosyncrasies, and his passion for cricket. This is a unique account of the fascination of mathematics and of one of its most compelling exponents in modern times.
第一次i听说Hardy的这本书是在Du Sautoy的Finding Moonshine。在介绍反证法的时候,Du Sautoy引用Hardy对比数学和象棋技巧的一句话,“It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematici...
评分很有意思的小书。天才吐起槽真的酣畅淋漓,“年轻人应该自视甚高,但不应该愚蠢”,“好的工作都不是被‘谦逊的’人所做出来的”,书里辩白了数学家这种可爱的骄傲,来自于三点:1.智力上的好奇心,2.对职业的自豪感,3.抱负。“我做我所做之事乃是因为,它乃是我唯一完全能够...
评分读了第二遍并仔细做了笔记,比第一遍读后的理解清晰了许多。 如果十年前读到此书,我的感想一定是“数学家真纯粹啊做研究真高大上啊我也要”,现在我读后的感想是,我不敢说哈代有失偏颇,但是我清楚地知道自己和他意见不同,我也接受这不是一个需要我惊慌失措赶紧校正自己三观...
评分This is the reason we love Europe, the British Empire, and the nineteenth century. As Hardy himself said more than once in this essay, an "apology" is bound to be to some extent personal. Thus the reader's own life path and choices are sure to play a role i...
对数学家与数学的探讨深入浅出,不涉及任何艰深的数学知识。一个伟大数学家晚年直抒胸臆的告白萦绕着淡泊而又动人心魄的悲伤,其深厚内涵已超越数学,任何创造性工作者都能从中找到共鸣。文笔冷静精准,逻辑如数学证明般简约明晰,全篇有希腊雕塑般的纯净高冷。
评分"Ambition is a noble passion..." 英伦摇滚风啊。
评分差不多每句話都是我想說的啊,太偉大了。以後需要談論有關的東西,引用就好了,因為我不可能比Hardy說得更好。
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评分为什么要学数学?数学的实际意义在哪里?数学的永恒不朽和普遍意义(permanence, immortality,generality)区别于其他科学学科。应用数学或可有所实用,但纯数学的价值在哪里?
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