A Mathematician’s Apology, G. H. Hardy (ISBN 978-938831814-3, Hawk Press)

Read this short and apparently well known book from early twentieth century. I came across a reference to it in another book recently although I don’t recall where. Anyway, the book kind of tries to justify being a pure mathematician. With the focus on pure mathematics utility is discarded as a possible justification by Hardy from the beginning but he still discusses utility in a few chapters. Hardy tries to answer if mathematics is worth doing and why he does it. The answer as to why is simply because he is good at it and mathematics is the only thing he is that good at. He generalises this a the main motivation of why people do certain things. The bulk of the book tries to answer if mathematics is worth doing and as he cannot go into technical detail to illustrate this with examples it all remains rather abstract and vague. As a physicist I studied a lot of mathematics in the past but almost all of this would be outside the category of pure mathematics as defined by Hardy. But it still helped me understand some of the messages he was trying to convey. It seems to boil down to pure mathematics being worth doing much like it is worth to write poetry or to paint. I agree with this point of view. But as a justification the book didn’t really convince me because it was necessarily too vague on the mathematics side to keep it understandable for the layman. A bit of a dilemma, not sure the arguments could convince the non mathematician and unnecessary to convince the converted. I see its value more as biographical, giving a glimpse into the thoughts of a mathematician. 29 chapters crammed into 70 pages so all very short. If the subject interest you and you are looking for a book you can read in the 5′ you are waiting left and right during the day then go for it.