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chrissych 's review for:
Fermat's Enigma
by Simon Singh
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have some longstanding issues with maths; namely that I am awful at them, fall prey to a number of silly arithmetic mistakes that topple my every attempt at them, and have a hard time thinking abstractly enough to grasp some of their most fundamental concepts.
This book has undone all of that in one fell swoop that had me staying up late, hesitant to stop reading and eager to learn more.
Simon Singh weaves a fantastically accessible tale of history, tragedy, intellectual conquest, and the triumphs of the human mind. And, of course, pure maths. He thoroughly explains a number of challenging mathematical concepts and proofs that could easily baffle non-mathematicians, softening them in just the right ways without oversimplifying. Never once does he condescend or patronize, and it's clear that he expects his readers to do a bit of work to follow along; for me, a sort of math-phobic, this book presented the perfect blend of clarification and challenge, the sort of exploration I've come to expect from my best graduate-level lecturers in my own field.
Not only did I learn a lot of history and a remarkable amount of maths (the appendix offers some proofs for the reader to work through, in addition to the main text, and I'm happy to say I was able to work them out with Singh's helpful elucidation), I also found that the general theme of branching disparate fields in order to "combine resources," so to speak, and solve big problems carried important implications for my own research goals in the psychology of learning and memory. In general, the book left me feeling motivated and inspired, both to immerse myself in my research and explore maths further. Singh has left me with the quiet confidence that I may actually have the capacity to understand and even excel in an area heretofore mentally closed off to me if I just put my mind to it, a feeling that I have never experienced until now.
This book has undone all of that in one fell swoop that had me staying up late, hesitant to stop reading and eager to learn more.
Simon Singh weaves a fantastically accessible tale of history, tragedy, intellectual conquest, and the triumphs of the human mind. And, of course, pure maths. He thoroughly explains a number of challenging mathematical concepts and proofs that could easily baffle non-mathematicians, softening them in just the right ways without oversimplifying. Never once does he condescend or patronize, and it's clear that he expects his readers to do a bit of work to follow along; for me, a sort of math-phobic, this book presented the perfect blend of clarification and challenge, the sort of exploration I've come to expect from my best graduate-level lecturers in my own field.
Not only did I learn a lot of history and a remarkable amount of maths (the appendix offers some proofs for the reader to work through, in addition to the main text, and I'm happy to say I was able to work them out with Singh's helpful elucidation), I also found that the general theme of branching disparate fields in order to "combine resources," so to speak, and solve big problems carried important implications for my own research goals in the psychology of learning and memory. In general, the book left me feeling motivated and inspired, both to immerse myself in my research and explore maths further. Singh has left me with the quiet confidence that I may actually have the capacity to understand and even excel in an area heretofore mentally closed off to me if I just put my mind to it, a feeling that I have never experienced until now.