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Dr.Riemann's Zeros Hardcover – 22 Nov 2002

by Karl Sabbagh (Author)
3 out of 5 stars 14 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Atlantic Books (22 Nov. 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1843541009
  • ISBN-13: 978-1843541004
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.5 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 361,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon Review

Karl Sabbagh points out in Dr Riemann's Zeros prime numbers reveal their true magic in combination. Every even number can be obtained by adding together two prime numbers. And all non-primes can be obtained by multiplying two smaller prime numbers. This is a book about mathematics, not about the sorts of calculations and formulae we learned (and promptly forgot) at school. It is about a sphere of endeavour whose "glorious achievements...are less accessible than those of almost any other aspect of human culture." So while, at one level, Sabbagh's book is about how we look for prime numbers, his other, rather mordant accomplishment, is to show how wrong we non-mathematicians are, when we try to imagine what 'real' maths looks like.

Sabbagh's own mathematical gifts are just enough to give him glimpses of the subject's beauty. This beauty, he argues, is as real and vivid! as a phrase in music, or a curve in painting--but to perceive it requires a rare sort of imagination. A one-eyed man writing for a blind (non-mathematical) audience, Sabbagh's frustration enlivens his writing and adds tremendous poignancy to his difficult and worthwhile account. Part-biographical and part mathematical, Dr Riemann's Zeros describes a mathematical landscape whose navigation requires so many good ideas, it tests not just the ingenuity of the individual mathematician, but the soundness, communicativeness, and aggregated wisdom of a whole (largely invisible) culture. --Simon Ings

About the Author

KARL SABBAGH is a writer and television producer.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Reimann Hypothesis
By Mehrdad Nourshargh on 26 Feb. 2004
Format: Hardcover
A a fascinating subject matter, however ultimately I was disappointed by this book. I thought the initial introduction to the “Riemann Hypothesis” is well constructed. The book then seems to almost randomly jump from one mathematician to the next as the author interviews them. The writings are definitely humerous but they lack any depth in making a connection to the original hypothesis and there is too much irrelevant material presented about the peculiarities of the mathematics in question. For examples jokes, songs and witty quotations. Although sometimes funny, for the most part they are tiresome and boring. Lastly there is absolutely no historic information about Riemann himself (yes the book is about him I check the cover!). I thought it strange that the author described in great detail over 10 mathematicians but excluded Riemann. How did Reimann start off? why did he get interested in Prime Numbers? What did the hypothesis mean to him?
The scientific implications of the hypothesis (which would have made fascinating reading) are barely touched upon, e.g the connection with Quantum Mechanics, the implications to encryption codes etc.
There is a book covering the same material, called “Prime Obsession” by John Derbyshire which is far superior to this book, sorry....
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Disappointingly unmathematical
By Andrew Walkden on 1 Feb. 2004
Format: Hardcover
This book is entertaining reading for the first 6 or so chapters (out of 17), but thereafter, it descends into an appallingly copy edited (numerous repeated sentences and even repeated paragraphs) ramble about the mathematicians in and around current research. I wanted to know more about the topic, and less about the 'quirkiness' of some of the researchers. It seems exactly as if the author spent too much time on the opening 6 chapters, then got leant on by the publisher to finish up. The result is a repetitive and uninteresting account of the author's conversations with mathematicians. One saving grace is the inclusion of several informative toolkits and an appendix at the end of the book, that adequately cover some of the maths in more detail. If you do buy the book and enjoy the maths side rather than the human nature side, don't be afraid to miss out chapters 9 to 17, there's nothing of much interest in there.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
A disappointment
By A Customer on 6 Dec. 2003
Format: Paperback
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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
The Riemann Hypothesis
By J. Clark on 9 July 2006
Format: Paperback
I really enjoyed this book. It skips between explanations of some of the mathematical concepts associated with the subject and the stories and experiences of the mathematicians who are working, and have worked, on the topic. It is evident that a lot of research and interviewing of top mathematicians has gone into the book. It's an interesting insight into the world of mathematicians and does well to get the gist of the Hypothesis across, without going into the mathematical detail that would make it incomprehensible to most of us. Though some explanations were very good, I'm not sure whether all the mathematical discussion would be followed by someone not familiar with maths, but I guess they're unlikely to read the book anyway. I'm am currently doing a maths degree, and thought it was a great read!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Fun to read, but disappointing
By lexo1941 on 22 Sept. 2009
Format: Paperback
Popular science writing is not easy even when the subject matter is as accessible as cuddly beasties or space travel, and popular writing about mathematics is very much harder. So hard that you wonder if it should be attempted by anyone but the exceptionally gifted. Karl Sabbagh is a very fine writer indeed, but I don't think he's the man to write a popular account of the Riemann Hypothesis and recent attempts to prove it.

For a start, he seems to have a shaky grasp of who he is writing for. Anybody who picks up this book in the first place is likely to be a bit of a geek, and such a person will not be satisfed with the way Sabbagh frequently refuses to explain things on the grounds that he thinks that the reader will not be interested, or won't be able to follow them; so for example, when he talks about an attempt to prove "something called the parallel postulate", he neglects to explain what the parallel postulate is. It's not even a very difficult subject to explain, but people who read popular books about maths do so partly in order to pick up a bit of math, and Sabbagh's careful focus on the personalities of the people he's talking about and his lack of interest in handing over chunks of carefully digested and clearly explained theory means that this book is extremely light in weight.

So in the end, as with so many books of popular science, the interested reader is forced to throw the book away and go straight back to the bookshop in search of stuff in the Further Reading list. I am now very interested in the Riemann Hypothesis, not so much in the stories Sabbagh had to tell about it.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A neat balance
By Matt Westwood on 30 Dec. 2007
Format: Hardcover
It appears that Sabbagh was not intending to write a comprehensive history of the Riemann conjecture, but merely to give a personal account of the state of play at the moment, with some welcome mathematical background. (Many authors seem to believe that including actual raw equations in their works will alienate their readers, to which one is tempted to say: Bah, humbug.)

I found this an interesting balance between hard maths and soft chat, and as such is somewhat superior to some of the other works in the field.

If you're after learning about where we're at with this problem, then this is an interesting, if not essential, addition to your reading list.
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