Title: Littlewood's Miscellany /
Authors: Littlewood, John E. 1885-1977.; Bollobás, Béla.; Littlewood, John E. 1885-1977.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 1986
Subjects: Mathematics.
Abstract: "Littlewood's Miscellany, which includes most of the earlier work as well as much of the material Professor Littlewood collected after the publication of A Mathematician's Miscellany, allows us to see academic life in Cambridge, especially in Trinity College, through the eyes of one of its greatest figures. The joy that Professor Littlewood found in life and mathematics is reflected in the many amusing anecdotes about his contemporaries, written in his pungent, aphoristic style. The general reader should, in most instances, have no trouble following the mathematical passages"--Publisher's description.
Contents: Introduction to A Mathematician's Miscellany -- Mathematics with minimum 'Raw Material" -- From the mathematical tripos -- Cross-purposes, unconscious assumptions, howlers, misprints, etc -- The zoo -- Ballistics -- The dilemma of probability theory -- From Fermat's last theorem to the abolition of capital punishment -- A mathematical education -- Review of Ramanujan's collected papers -- Large numbers -- Lion and man -- People -- Academic life -- Odds and ends -- Newton and the attraction of a sphere -- The discovery of Neptune -- The Adams-Airy affair -- The mathematician's art of work.