Review by Choice Review
Math majors sometimes hear things like, "You're so lucky that math is easy for you." Well, this doesn't last forever. No matter how gifted one is, if one continues to keep pushing forward with mathematics, the subject eventually becomes extremely hard. The present book serves to illustrate the point. Villani (director, Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris) won a Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel Prize, in 2010, and in this memoir he tells the story behind his prize-winning work. Although no reader will doubt that Villani is extremely bright, there is no sense of an inflated ego in his writing. Indeed, he admits that he stands in awe of certain other mathematicians. What comes across most strongly is how extremely hard he and his collaborator, Clément Mouhot, had to work to conquer their chosen problem. While he includes technical details, he notes that many of these will "be unfamiliar even to professional mathematicians," and they can be skipped by mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike. Villani blends the story of his mathematical proof with reflections on music, Japanese comics (manga), and French food, helping to humanize his tale. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. --Craig Bauer, York College of Pennsylvania
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Winner of the prestigious Fields Medal in 2010, Villani recalls how his breakthroughs in mathematics emerged from a state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeded to another as if miraculously. In this scintillating narrative (felicitously translated), Villani invites readers into this exceptional mental state. To be sure, only readers with advanced mathematical training can decipher the formulas that Villani includes to explain his analyses of Landau damping and the Boltzmann equation. But even math-averse readers will relish the excitement of a gifted mind triumphing over forbidding difficulties, particularly those that explorers encounter in the tangled boundary region between pure mathematical theory and empirical physics. But before they experience the success that transports the author into celebratory music and poetry, they share the completely human frustrations and disappointments that precede it. And though readers will marvel at his remarkable genius, they will also recognize how much Villani depends on loving family ties, congenial friendships, and supportive institutions to nurture that genius. A rare portal into stratospheric mathematics.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
French mathematician Villani illuminates his year leading up to winning the Fields Medal, alternating between technical descriptions of his work and insights into his personality. The author's stories for his children, interpretations of his dreams, and descriptions of his late-night tea-stealing escapades offer a fascinating picture of his life. The math is mostly incomprehensible, even to professional mathematicians, and little of it contributes to an understanding of the author's process. But the narrative is enjoyable anyway, and most of the work on the proof can be followed in the less technical correspondence between Villani and his colleagues. Of wider interest than the particulars of the math is the context: Villani chronicles his meetings with eminent mathematicians and describes the mathematical institutes he visits, providing a view of the math community not often seen by the general public. His energy and passion for his work show through, making the writing feel genuine and honest. A few biographical passages veer in strange, navel-gazing directions, but there is no air of pretention on the author's part. Though heavy on advanced math, Villani's book eloquently humanizes mathematicians and is inexplicably fascinating even for the layperson. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This memoir offers the opportunity to "look over the shoulder" of an outstanding mathematician, at the top of his game, as he strives to break a major open problem in mathematical physics. We can see how a proof proceeds from an original concept through a series of obstacles surmountable only by long hours and days of esoteric calculations needed to resolve the technical details. Unfortunately, this means that the book contains sentences full of obscure terminology and many pages covered by an impenetrable thicket of mathematical symbols. Few of us will be able to, and almost no one will actually, read these sections. Nevertheless, among the technicalities readers will learn something about the life of a modern productive research scholar: a young family man, a lover of music and fine food who hopscotches the world, giving and listening to lectures, exchanging ideas with his peers, and all the while trading emails with his research collaborator as their work advances. Verdict This is an interesting book because it is rare that a currently active productive scholar takes time out to write about his/her creative process, but one suspects that the number of readers will be very small.-Harold D. Shane, mathematics emeritus, Baruch Coll. Lib., CUNY (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
