The Music of the Primes: Why an unsolved problem in mathematics matters

(This ebook contains a limited number of illustrations.)The ebook of the critically-acclaimed popular science book by a writer who is fast becoming a celebrity mathematician.Prime numbers are the very atoms of arithmetic. They also embody one of the most tantalising enigmas in the pursuit of human knowledge. How can one predict when the next prime number will occur? Is there a formula which could generate primes? These apparently simple questions have confounded mathematicians ever since the Ancient Greeks.In 1859, the brilliant German mathematician Bernard Riemann put forward an idea which finally seemed to reveal a magical harmony at work in the numerical landscape. The…