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A review by brizmus
Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature by Marcus du Sautoy
4.0
8/10
The first half of this book was amazing. He did such a good job of giving us the history of mathematics and explaining abstract concepts in fun, easy to understand ways.
And he did a great job interweaving his personal story in to this.
Unfortunately, he went off the rails a little bit in the second half. There was a lot of name mentioning and a lot less history and explanation. In the first half he defined the word prime.
In the second half, if I hadn’t studied group theory, if I hadn’t already known about zeta functions, I would have been totally lost. Interesting for a mathematician, but maybe not for anyone else.
And at the end of each chapter, it was like he remembered that he was supposed to also talk about himself, which made for a few sentences that really seemed to come out of nowhere.
Still, I loved it!! And I find myself feeling passionate about symmetry all over again, reminded of my undergraduate days.
The first half of this book was amazing. He did such a good job of giving us the history of mathematics and explaining abstract concepts in fun, easy to understand ways.
And he did a great job interweaving his personal story in to this.
Unfortunately, he went off the rails a little bit in the second half. There was a lot of name mentioning and a lot less history and explanation. In the first half he defined the word prime.
In the second half, if I hadn’t studied group theory, if I hadn’t already known about zeta functions, I would have been totally lost. Interesting for a mathematician, but maybe not for anyone else.
And at the end of each chapter, it was like he remembered that he was supposed to also talk about himself, which made for a few sentences that really seemed to come out of nowhere.
Still, I loved it!! And I find myself feeling passionate about symmetry all over again, reminded of my undergraduate days.