One reason I continue to fork over the cash for my subscription to Nature is the quality of their book reviews. In the March 24 edition, Simon Singh covers John D. Barrow’s The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless, Endless.
Here’s a quote, but the full text is linked above.
“We learn that one of Hilbert’s students committed suicide when he failed to solve a particular mathematical problem. Hilbert was asked to speak at the funeral, so he stood at the graveside and matter-of-factly explained that the problem was not particularly difficult and that the young man had merely failed to look at it in the right way.”
And I’m thinking: as much as I would dearly love to read this book, will I? There are so many books I want to read before I die, and yet I can’t find time to get through more than one or two a month.
That’s how far we humans exist below the infinite.
D