Search results
A Mathematician's Apology is a 1940 essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy, which offers a defence of the pursuit of mathematics. Central to Hardy's " apology " – in the sense of a formal justification or defence (as in Plato 's Apology of Socrates ) – is an argument that mathematics has value independent of possible applications.
- G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow
- 1940
Published in 1940, A Mathematician’s Apology, by G. H. Hardy, is an extended essay on why people study mathematics and how its logical purity, much more than its usefulness in daily life, makes it a worthy pursuit. Hardy was one of the 20th century’s most important mathematicians.
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.
- J. F. Randolph, G. H. Hardy
- 1942
Aug 5, 2014 · Thus Whitehead (who has been a mathematician) speaks of ‘the tremendous effect of mathematical knowledge on the lives of men, on their daily avocations, on the organization of society’; and Hogben (who is as unsympathetic to what I and other mathematicians call mathematics as White-head is sympathetic) says that ‘without a knowledge of mathemati...
It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathema-ticians have done.
Dec 26, 2011 · G.H. Hardy is one of the very few mathematicians who’s been immortalized in song, by the Embarrassment no less: Hardy’s little book, A Mathematician’s Apology (that’s apology in the sense of defense, not regret), written in 1940 near the end of his career, is an eloquent and concise statement of the mathematician’s, theoretician’s ...
People also ask
What is a mathematician's apology?
Who should read a mathematician's apology?
Is a mathematician's apology worth reading?
What is Professor Hardy's 'apology'?
A Mathematician's Apology is perhaps the most concise piece every written describing the creative process of doing mathematics. Its author, G H Hardy, a world-class theorist of the period between the great wars, describes his attraction to mathematics, defending the role of the pure mathematician.