There seems to be a neverending (sic) stream of books and posts on the Riemann hypothesis. A while ago I wrote about du Sautoy’s The music of primes and over a snow-sparse skiing holiday I read Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis by Daniel N. Rockmore.
Here’s the blurb

Like a hunter who sees ‘a bit of blood’ on the trail, that’s how Princeton mathematician Peter Sarnak describes the feeling of chasing an idea that seems to have a chance of success. If this is so, then the jungle of abstractions that is mathematics is full of frenzied hunters these days. They are out stalking big game: the resolution of ‘The Riemann Hypothesis’, seems to be in their sights. The Riemann Hypothesis is about the prime numbers, the fundamental numerical elements. Stated in 1859 by Professor Bernhard Riemann, it proposes a simple law which Riemann believed a ‘very likely’ explanation for the way in which the primes are distributed among the whole numbers, indivisible stars scattered without end throughout a boundless numerical universe. Just eight years later, at the tender age of thirty-nine Riemann would be dead from tuberculosis, cheated of the opportunity to settle his conjecture. For over a century, the Riemann Hypothesis has stumped the greatest of mathematical minds, but these days frustration has begun to give way to excitement. This unassuming comment is revealing astounding connections among nuclear physics, chaos and number theory, creating a frenzy of intellectual excitement amplified by the recent promise of a one million dollar bountry. The story of the quest to settle the Riemann Hypothesis is one of scientific exploration. It is peopled with solitary hermits and gregarious cheerleaders, cool calculators and wild-eyed visionaries, Nobel Prize-winners and Fields Medalists. To delve into the Riemann Hypothesis is to gain a window into the world of modern mathematics and the nature of mathematics research. Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis will open wide this window so that all may gaze through it in amazement.

Personally, I prefer this book over du Sautoy’s. Ok, the first few chapters are a bit pompous but the latter half gives a (much) better idea of the ‘quantum chaos’ connection to the RH. At the Arcadian Functor, there was the post Riemann rumbling on pointing to the book Dr, Riemann’s zeros by Karl Sabbagh.

From what Kea wrote I understand it also involves quantum chaos. Im not sure whether I’ll bother to buy this one though, as one reviewer wrote

I stopped reading this rather fast: it had errors in it, and while a lovely story for the non-mathematician, for anyone who knows and loves mathematics (and who else really does buy these books?) it’s really rather frustrating that, after a few chapters, you’re still not much clearer on what Reimann’s Hypothesis really is.
Not worth the money: try The Music of the Primes (utterly brilliant) instead. This book simply cannot begin to compete.

The last line did it for me, but then “Des gouts et des couleurs, on ne dispute pas”. Speaking of which, over at Noncommutative geometry there was a post by Alain Connes on his approach to the Riemann Hypothesis Le reve mathematique which some found

A masterpiece of mathematical blogging, a post by Alain Connes in Noncommutative Geometry. Strongly recommended.

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blogging, Connes, geometry, noncommutative, Riemann

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Posted in general, rants
Written on Mon, 12 March 2007 at 1:10 pm
Tags: blogging, Connes, geometry, noncommutative, Riemann
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