https://www.heynew.uk/books/Recent content in Books on Marginal NotesHugo -- gohugo.ioen-gbMarginal NotesTue, 27 Oct 2026 22:20:00 +1300https://www.heynew.uk/books/singh-fermats-last-theorem/Tue, 27 Oct 2026 22:20:00 +1300https://www.heynew.uk/books/singh-fermats-last-theorem/Published in the US as Fermat’s Enigma. This is the book I would give to someone who thinks mathematics has no stories. It is a 350-year detective story with a single, very simple question at its centre. The question Pythagoras gives us whole numbers with x² + y² = z², like 3, 4, 5. Fermat claimed, in the 1630s, that there are no whole-number solutions to xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ for any power n greater than 2.https://www.heynew.uk/books/hardy-mathematicians-apology/Mon, 19 Oct 2026 21:05:00 +1300https://www.heynew.uk/books/hardy-mathematicians-apology/“Apology” here means a defence, not an expression of regret, although by the end the book reads a little like both. Hardy wrote it in his early sixties, after his creative powers had faded, and it is part argument and part farewell. The argument Hardy wants to justify a life spent on pure mathematics, and his justification is beauty. Good mathematics, in his view, is serious, deep, general and economical. It is closer to poetry than to engineering.https://www.heynew.uk/books/rovelli-seven-brief-lessons/Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:30:00 +1300https://www.heynew.uk/books/rovelli-seven-brief-lessons/This one took an evening. It is under a hundred pages, the English translation of a series of newspaper articles, and it reads more like an essay than a textbook. I am not sure I learned many facts from it. I am sure it changed how I picture a few things. The lessons The seven pieces cover general relativity, quantum mechanics, the large-scale structure of the universe, elementary particles, quantum gravity, heat and time, and finally where we humans fit in all this.https://www.heynew.uk/books/strogatz-infinite-powers/Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:15:00 +1200https://www.heynew.uk/books/strogatz-infinite-powers/Strogatz wants to tell you what calculus is for before telling you how to do it, and for a reader like me, who passed the exams long ago without ever seeing the point, that order is exactly right. One idea The book is organised around what he calls the Infinity Principle: to understand something curved or changing, cut it into infinitely many simple pieces, deal with each piece, then put them back together.https://www.heynew.uk/books/feynman-qed/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:40:00 +1200https://www.heynew.uk/books/feynman-qed/I expected this to be a gentle tour. It is gentle, but it is not a tour: Feynman actually teaches you how to calculate, using nothing more than little arrows drawn on paper. The book is based on four public lectures, and you can still hear the speaking voice in it. The arrows The whole book rests on one device. Every way an event can happen gets an arrow. You can picture each arrow as the hand of a tiny stopwatch that turns while the photon travels.