Mathematics without Apologies

<p><b>An insightful reflection on the mathematical soul</b><br><br>What do pure mathematicians do and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers&#151;for the sake of truth beauty and practical applications&#151;this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly journalistic and pop culture sources.<br><br>Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayy&#225;m to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands Michael Harris reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual ethical and existential challenges he touches on a wide variety of questions such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party?<br><br>Disarmingly candid relentlessly intelligent and richly entertaining <i>Mathematics without Apologies</i> takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia India medieval Islam the Bronx and beyond.</p>