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
发表于2025-03-03
A Mathematician's Apology 2025 pdf epub mobi 电子书
1.[写[关于数学的东西]]的人是可以被[写[数学本身]]的人所鄙视的,我现在这样做是因为我超过了60岁,我的智力、精力、耐心不足以做数学了。 2.我需要为数学做辩白——我所做的数学是重要的,有价值的。人们觉得数学重要、有价值,是因为人们不知道什么是(纯)数学,人们对数学...
评分 评分 评分英国大数学家哈代(Godfrey Harold Hardy)写过一本叫《一个数学家的辩白》(A Mathematician's Apology)的小书,至今亦广为流传,可惜我孤陋寡闻,上了大学才知道:那时刚上大学,喜欢吹水的小舟老师经常会在课堂上大谈数学的好处以及他的个人经历,这就正如哈代在书中所说的...
图书标签: 数学 传记 mathematics G.H.Hardy 哲学 思维 Hardy 思考
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.
哈代好自负
评分看完的第一本全英文书
评分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1)数学是一流的,谈论数学的学问是二流的,正如文学之于文学批评。2)纯粹数学是真正的数学,应用数学是trivial的。3)对纯粹数学的辩护是美学的,而非实用的。至少纯粹数学是最无害的。4)其实最好的辩护是:如果再年轻一次,还是选择做数学家。5)老了就做不了数学了,数学是创造性的,而非沉思,属于年轻人。
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?
A Mathematician's Apology 2025 pdf epub mobi 电子书