What I Learned from Reading “Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant” by Julian Havil: Part 18

The Riemann Hypothesis (see here, here, and here) is perhaps the most famous (and also most important) unsolved problems in mathematics. Gamma (page 207) provides a way of writing down this conjecture in a form that only uses notation that is commonly taught in high school:

If and for some pair of real numbers and , then .

As noted in the book, “It seems extraordinary that the most famous unsolved problem in the whole of mathematics can be phrased so that it involves the simplest of mathematical ideas: summation, trigonometry, logarithms, and [square roots].”

When I researching for my series of posts on conditional convergence, especially examples related to the constant , the reference Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant by Julian Havil kept popping up. Finally, I decided to splurge for the book, expecting a decent popular account of this number. After all, I’m a professional mathematician, and I took a graduate level class in analytic number theory. In short, I don’t expect to learn a whole lot when reading a popular science book other than perhaps some new pedagogical insights.

Boy, was I wrong. As I turned every page, it seemed I hit a new factoid that I had not known before.

In this series, I’d like to compile some of my favorites — while giving the book a very high recommendation.