Suggested Reading
Earlier Years – KS3
Penrose the Mathematical Cat
The Number Devil – Hans Magnus Enzenberger
The Murderous Maths series (by the creators of Horrible Histories)
YouTube – The Numberphile
To Further Develop Interest
The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets – Simon Singh
Euclid in the Rainforest by Joseph Mazur
Beating the Odds and How long is a piece of string by Rob Eastaway & John Haigh
Alex in Numberland by Alex Bellos
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott (Also an animated movie released in 2007)
17 Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart
Hidden Figures by Margot Less Shetterly – read the book AND watch the film
From 0 to Infinity in 26 Centures – The Extraordinary Story of Maths – by Chris Waring
The Number Mysteries – Marcus Du Sautoy
The Calculus Wars – Jason Bardi
Short Film – The Love of Calculus based on Goldbach’s Conjecture available on YouTube.
The Poincare Conjecture – Donal O’Shea
Longitude – Dara Sobel
In addition, for those interested in taking their mathematical studies further (or just furthering their interest), we include (with some duplication as to be expected):
Recommended By Cambridge University
Makers of Mathematics by S. Hollingdale (Penguin, 1989)
There are not many books on the history of mathematics which are pitched at a suitable level. Hollingdale gives a biographical approach which is both readable and mathematical. You might also try E.T. Bell Men of Mathematics (Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, 1986). Historians of mathematics have a lot to say about this (very little of it complimentary) but it is full of good stories which have inspired generations of mathematicians.
A Russian Childhood by S. Kovalevskaya (trans. B. Stillman) (Springer, 1978, now out of print)
Sonya Kovalevskaya was the first woman in modern times to hold a lectureship at a European university: in 1889, in spite of the fact that she was a woman (with an unconventional private life), a foreigner, a socialist (or worse) and a practitioner of the new Weierstrassian theory of analysis, she was appointed a professor at the University of Stockholm. Her memories of childhood are non-mathematical but fascinating.
She discovered in her nursery the theory of infinitesimals: times being hard, the walls had been papered with pages of mathematical notes.
Alan Turing, the Enigma by A. Hodges (Vintage, 1992)
A great biography of Alan Turing, a pioneer of modern computing. The title has a double meaning: the man was an enigma, committing suicide in 1954 by eating a poisoned apple, and the German code that he was instrumental in cracking was generated by the Enigma machine. The book is largely nonmathematical, but there are no holds barred when it comes to describing his major achievement, now called a Turing machine, with which he demonstrated that a famous conjecture by Hilbert is false.
The Man Who Knew Infinity by R. Kanigel (Abacus, 1992)
READ THE BOOK AND THEN WATCH THE FILM
The life of Ramanujan, the self-taught mathematical prodigy from a village near Madras. He sent Hardy samples of his work from India, which included rediscoveries of theorems already well known in the West and other results which completely baffled Hardy. Some of his estimates for the number of ways a large integer can be expressed as the sum of integers are extraordinarily accurate, but seem to have been plucked out of thin air.
A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy (CUP, 1992)
Hardy was one of the best mathematicians of the first part of this century. Always an achiever (his New Year resolutions one year included proving the Riemann hypothesis, making 211 not out in the fourth test at the Oval, finding an argument for the non-existence of God which would convince the general public, and murdering Mussolini), he led the renaissance in mathematical analysis in England. Graham Greene knew of no writing (except perhaps Henry James’s Introductory Essays) which conveys so clearly and with such an absence of fuss the excitement of the creative artist. There is an introduction by C.P.Snow.
Littlewood’s Miscellany (edited by B. Bollobas) (CUP, 1986)
This collection, first published in 1953, contains some wonderful insights into the development and lifestyle of a great mathematician as well as numerous anecdotes, mathematical (Lion and Man is excellent) and not-so-mathematical. The latest edition contains several worthwhile additions, including a splendid lecture entitled ‘The Mathematician’s Art of Work’, (as well as various items of interest mainly to those who believe that Trinity Great Court is the centre of the Universe). Thoroughly recommended.
The man who loved only numbers by Paul Hoffman (Fourth Estate, 1999)
An excellent biography of Paul Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians of all time. Erdos wrote over 1500 papers (about 10 times the normal number for a mathematician) and collaborated with 485 other mathematicians. He had no home; he just descended on colleagues with whom he wanted to work, bringing with him all his belongings in a suitcase. Apart from details of Erdos’s life, there is plenty of discussion of the kind of problems (mainly number theory) that he worked on.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman by R.P. Feynman (Arrow Books, 1992)
Autobiographical anecdotes from one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the last century. It became an immediate best-seller. You learn about physics, about life and (most puzzling of all) about Feynman. Very amusing and entertaining.
Simon Singh. Fermat’s Last Theorem (Fourth Estate)
You must read this story of Andrew Wiles’s proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, including all sorts of mathematical ideas and anecdotes; there is no better introduction to the world of research mathematics.
Singh’s later The Code Book (Fourth Estate) is not so interesting mathematically, but is still a very good read.
Marcus du Sautoy. The Music of the Primes (Harper-Collins, 2003)
This is a wide-ranging historical survey of a large chunk of mathematics with the Riemann Hypothesis acting as a thread tying everything together. The Riemann Hypothesis is one of the big unsolved problems in mathematics – in fact, it is one of the Clay Institute million dollar problems – though unlike Fermat’s last theorem it is unlikely ever to be the subject of pub conversation. Du Sautoy’s book is bang up to date, and attractively written. Some of the maths is tough but the history and storytelling paint a convincing (and appealing) picture of the world of professional mathematics.
Marcus Du Sautoy Finding Moonshine: a mathematician’s journey through symmetry
(Fourth Estate, 2008)
This book has had exceptionally good reviews (even better than Du Sautoy’s Music of the Primes listed above). The title is self-explanatory. The book starts with a romp through the history and winds up with some very modern ideas. You even have the opportunity to discover a group for yourself and have it named after you.
- McLeish Number (Bloomsbury, 1991)
The development of the theory of numbers, from Babylon to Babbage, written with humour and erudition. Hugely enjoyable.
Recommended By Oxford University:
Popular Mathematics
- Acheson, David 1089 and All That (2002), The Calculus Story (2017)
- Bellos, Alex Alex’s Adventures in Numberland (2010)
- Clegg, Brian A Brief History of Infinity (2003)
- Courant, Robbins and Stewart What is Mathematics? (1996)
- Devlin, Keith Mathematics: The New Golden Age (1998), The Millennium Problems (2004), The Unfinished Game (2008)
- Dudley, Underwood Is Mathematics Inevitable? A Miscellany (2008)
- Elwes, Richard MATHS 1001 (2010), Maths in 100 Key Breakthroughs (2013)
- Gardiner, Martin The Colossal Book of Mathematics (2001)
- Gowers, Tim Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (2002)
- Hofstadter, Douglas Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)
- Körner, T. W. The Pleasures of Counting (1996)
- Neale, Vicky Closing the Gap: the quest to understand prime numbers (2017)
- Odifreddi, Piergiorgio The Mathematical Century: The 30 Greatest Problems of the Last 100 Years (2004)
- Piper, Fred & Murphy, Sean Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction (2002)
- Polya, George How to Solve It (1945)
- Sewell, Michael (ed.) Mathematics Masterclasses: Stretching the Imagination (1997)
- Singh, Simon The Code Book (2000), Fermat’s Last Theorem (1998)
- Stewart, Ian Letters to a Young Mathematician (2006), 17 Equations That Changed The World (2012)
