Although I love to read books (particularly murder mystery stories!) I’ve never really considered mathematics to be a subject which lends itself to being read about and personally I’ve always found maths to be a subject which is best understood through practical experience, by actually solving equations and playing around with problems until you understand them.
However there are some brilliant books available, covering some fascinating areas of mathematics, including the role of symmetry in our understanding of the universe (a branch of maths known as Group Theory) and the history of Riemann’s hypothesis (one of the most famous and important unsolved problems in maths). In this blog I want to tell you about my two favourite maths books.
The first is ‘Mathematics: The New Golden Age’ by Keith Devlin which I first read as an A-Level student preparing to go to university and even though that was 12 years ago I still find this book as interesting and informative as when I first read it. What makes this book so good is that although it covers many advanced and cutting-edge topics it is still incredibly easy to read and as well-written as any fictional story.
As a teacher I now find Devlin’s book to be an excellent source of information and ideas for my students and it’s usually the first book I turn to when my students ask me a question I can’t fully answer! This book was my first introduction to many interesting and important areas of mathematics, such as Riemann’s hypothesis, the use of prime numbers in cryptography and set theory, mathematical logic and the axioms of mathematics – many topics I later went on to study at university. As such I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with an interest in mathematics, irrespective of their age or background in maths.
My second choice is a very different type of book – ‘The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning’ by Paul Davies. This is a more advanced and challenging book than Devlin’s and is less specifically about mathematics, although maths plays a central role in the key focus of this book, which is to discuss the nature of reality and our universe and how our search for a greater understanding of the way the universe works reveals key ideas about the logical and philosophical nature of our existence.
This was the first book I read which mentioned the possibility of mathematics being more than just a tool for understanding the world around us. Instead the author discusses the idea that mathematics may be a fundamental truth of our universe, in the same way that we accept the laws of physics as being fundamentally real. Although this view is by no means fully accepted – for instance many of the friends I studied my PhD with firmly disagree with this view – I still find it fascinating that mathematics may be at the heart of our very existence and that we may all have been born with maths imprinted on our conscious.
Davies’ book is as wide-ranging as Devlin’s but in a very different way, ranging across topics such as mathematics, philosophy, computing, physics and religion. Although this book is more challenging than Devlin’s it is well worth the effort and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with an interest in maths who has also ever wondered why the universe exists and what life truly means.
There are many books available which do a superb job communicating the wonder and beauty of mathematics in a way which is easy to understand and without compromising on the key mathematical ideas involved. However for me these two books stand out as the best popular books I have ever read about maths. Moreover the fact that I still enjoy reading them, and that each time I do I still find new areas of thought and points of interest, shows just how good these books are and makes me want to recommend them above any other maths book I’ve read.
Dr McDarby is Maths Lecturer at Bellerbys College London
Mathematics: The New Golden Age at Amazon.co.uk
The Mind of God at Amazon.oc.uk
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