(1) prove the Riemann Hypothesis;
(2) make 211 not out in the fourth innings of the last Test Match
at the Oval;
(3) find an argument for the non-existence of God which shall
convince the general public;
(4) be the first man at the top of Mount Everest;
(5) be proclaimed the first president of the USSR of Great Britain
and Germany;
(6) murder Mussolini. (查看原文)
Hardy stayed in Denmark with Bohr until the very end of the summer vacation, and when he was obliged to return to England to start his lectures there was only a very small boat available…. The North Sea can be pretty rough, and the probability that such a small boat would sink was not exactly zero. Still, Hardy took the boat, but sent a postcard to Bohr: “I proved the Riemann Hypothesis. G.H. Hardy.”If the boat sinks and Hardy drowns, everybody must believe that he has proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Yet God would not let Hardy have such a great honor and so He will not let the boat sink. (查看原文)
赛尔（ Jean-pierre Serre）的《算术教程》（ A Course in Arithmetic，1973年）是一本大学生的数论教科书，它包括了下列主题：模形式、p进域、赫克算子，还有，当然！ζ函数。我好笑地想到某个糊涂的母亲为她小学三年级的孩子选了这本书，以帮助他掌握长乘法。 (查看原文)
Those five years of unpaid research work must have been hard ones for Bernhard Riemann. He was far from home; it was 120 miles from Göttingen to Quickborn, a two-day journey in great discomfort, and expensive. He did, though, have some company. In 1850 Richard Dedekind arrived at the university. Dedekind was 19, five years younger than Riemann, and was also aiming for a doctorate. It is plain from Dedekind’s biographical note on Riemann in the Collected Works that he felt affection and sympathy for his older colleague, and great admiration for his mathematical abilities; it is more difficult to judge Riemann’s feelings in the matter. (查看原文)
Dec 1849 Gauss to J.F.Encke: 「It recalled to me my own work in the same subject,whose beginning were in the distant past,in 1792 or 1793…one of the first things I did was direct my attention to the decreasing frequency of primes,to which purpose I counted the same in several chiliadis.I have often spent idle quarter of an hour to count another chiliad here and there;but I gave it up at last without quite getting through a million.」 (查看原文)
Hardy was a Peter Pan, a boy who never grew up. Snow: “His life remained the life of a brilliant young man until he was old: so did his spirit: his games, his interests, kept the lightness of a young don’s. And, like many men who keep a young man’s interests into their sixties, his last years were the darker for it.” (查看原文)
作者: [美] 约翰·德比希尔 副标题: 黎曼和数学中最大的未解之谜 原作名: Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics isbn: 7542867377 书名: 素数之恋 译者:陈为蓬 定价: 65.00元 出版社: 上海科技教育出版社 出版年: 2018-8 装帧: 平装
