A Mathematicians Apology

G.H. Hardy was one of 20th centurys 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 Notebooks as the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist. C.P. Snows Foreword gives sympathetic and witty insights into hardys 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.