This is the list of topical mathematics books I’ve read. They’re all a good read and the majority contain very little hard mathematics:
- “Fermat’s Last Theorem” by Simon Singh. This book traces the history of one of the most famous problems of all time; Fermat’s Last Theorem.
- “A Mathematician’s Apology” by G.H. Hardy.
- “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers” by Paul Hoffman. The biography of Paul Erdos. He is considered one of the most famous mathematicians of the 20th century and one of the most published of all time (second only to Leonard Euler). He was incredibly eccentric and lived only for mathematics. A fantastic read.
- “Adventures in Group Theory” by David Joyner. A gentile introduction into the world of group theory and how it relates to real world puzzles like the Rubik’s Cube.
The following are books I’m currently reading and should be able to report back on them at some point soon!
- “The Millenium Problems” by Keith Devlin. Probably the hardest book in the list to read. It explains the background of the seven $1,000,000 Millenium Problems, as set by the Clay Institute in 2000. They are considered to be the most important problems in modern mathematics.
- “The Music of the Primes: Why an Unsolved Problem in Mathematics Matters” by Marcus du Sautoy.
- “Nature’s Numbers” by Ian Stewart.
