Littlewood’s Miscellany by John E. Littlewood (PDF)

Description

Littlewood’s Miscellany, which includes most of the earlier work as well as much of the material Professor Littlewood collected after the publication of A Mathematician’s Miscellany, allows us to see academic life in Cambridge, especially in Trinity College, through the eyes of one of its greatest figures. The joy that Professor Littlewood found in life and mathematics is reflected in the many amusing anecdotes about his contemporaries, written in his pungent, aphoristic style. The general reader should, in most instances, have no trouble following the mathematical passages. For this publication, the new material has been prepared by Béla Bollobás; his foreword is based on a talk he gave to the British Society for the History of Mathematics on the occasion of Littlewood’s centenary.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The stories are still funny, and the advice still sound. Aged better than Hardy’s Mathematician’s Apology, though it is (sadly) less well known. I think the young like romantic figures. Littlewood, by surviving, thriving and having as good a time as can be managed, is not romantic. But is excellent company.

⭐There has been a flood of recent books detailing the agony and even the mental illness of mathematicians. This book is a rare and refreshing exception. A collection of the popular writings of J. E. Littlewood, a leading mathematician of the twentieth century, it demonstrates and celebrates the intellectual excitement and even the joy of doing creative mathematics.

⭐A great read.

⭐”The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it – would.” The book contains many similar quips, more or less connected to mathematics or the process of doing mathematics. There are also many interesting and deep mathematical puzzles (some of them have become classics since the book was written), linguistic paradoxes, short anecdotes about mathematicians, amusing mathematical errors, unintentionally funny formulations from books or papers, references to contemporary results. The book is a collection of fragments assembled by Littlewood, refreshingly lacking any serious organization. Based on the 1953 “A Mathematician’s Miscellany”, the book has stood the test of time, the few parts that feel outdated do so only because of the attention to detail of the author that seems uncommon today.

⭐Littlewood is the kind of historical scientific figure people look up to, not only because of his legacy in mathematical research but also for his towering intellectual reputation. I (shamelessly) admit here that I’ve read and reread this book so many times, each time picking up some nuances and details that Littlewood subtly convey between his lines. It is a glimpse into the mind of a genius. His style of writing is not out-of-fashion even many years after he put it on paper, probably in between replying to math letters from Hardy, and proving a theorem in analysis. Miscellany is nothing short than the last century’s most incredible mathematical essay.

⭐Written by one of the two brightest lights of the early 20th century, this book is a collection of rather random but interesting puzzles, theorems, and jokes. The author, J.E. Littlewood, along with frequent collaborator G.H. Hardy was a prolific mathematician. Example joke (by another mathematician) (paraphrased from memory): “There are only three authors in English Mathematics now: Littlewood, Hardy, and Littlewood-and-Hardy.”

⭐Littlewood’s notion of a miscellany was that order among the parts was irrelevant (although, by a paradox, there is some). It is a marvellous game to open a page at random and read for 5 minutes before sleep. One is bound to laugh, and to learn something, even if it is a page that has been seen before. Some of the maths is starred as “for professionals only” but need only be attempted if one is feeling up for it.

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