The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles Of Our Time - Softcover

Keith J. Devlin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465017304 ISBN 13: 9780465017300

Publisher: Basic Books, 2003

Synopsis

In 2000, the Clay Foundation announced a historic competition: whoever could solve any of seven extraordinarily difficult mathematical problems, and have the solution acknowledged as correct by the experts, would receive 1 million in prize money. There was some precedent for doing this: In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert proposed twenty-three problems that set much of the agenda for mathematics in the twentieth century. The Millennium Problems--chosen by a committee of the leading mathematicians in the world--are likely to acquire similar stature, and their solution (or lack of it) is likely to play a strong role in determining the course of mathematics in the twenty-first century. Keith Devlin, renowned expositor of mathematics and one of the authors of the Clay Institute's official description of the problems, here provides the definitive account for the mathematically interested reader.

About this title

About the Author

Keith Devlin is the Dean of the School of Social Science at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California, and a Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He is the author of 22 books, one interactive CD-ROM, and over 65 technical research papers in mathematics. His voice is heard regularly on National Public Radio, on such programs as "Weekend Edition," "Talk of the Nation," "Science Friday," "Sounds Like Science," and "To the Best of Our Knowledge." His previous books include Life by the Numbers, the companion to a PBS series that aired in April and May, 1998; Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic; and The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible.

From Publishers Weekly

The noble idea that advanced mathematics can be made comprehensible to laypeople is tested in this sometimes engaging but ultimately unsatisfying effort. Mathematician and NPR commentator Devlin (The Math Gene) bravely asserts that only "a good high-school knowledge of mathematics" is needed to understand these seven unsolved problems (each with a million-dollar price on its head from the Clay Mathematics Institute), but in truth a Ph.D. would find these thickets of equations daunting. Devlin does a good job with introductory material; his treatment of topology, elementary calculus and simple theorems about prime numbers, for example, are lucid and often fun. But when he works his way up to the eponymous problems he confronts the fact that they are too abstract, too encrusted with jargon, and just too hard. He finally throws in the towel on the Birch and Sinnerton-Dyer Conjecture ("Don't feel bad if you find yourself getting lost... the level of abstraction is simply too great for the nonexpert"), while the chapter on the Hodge Conjecture is so baffling that the second page finds him morosely conceding that "the wise strategy might be to give up." Nor does Devlin make a compelling case for the real-world importance of many of these problems, rarely going beyond vague assurances that solving them "would almost certainly involve new ideas that will... have other uses." Sadly, this quixotic book ends up proving that high-level mathematics is beyond the reach of all but the experts.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0465017304
• ISBN 13: 9780465017300
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256