Far be it from me to distract attention from Rich’s book (whose title
escapes me–Kathryn, perhaps you could give it a mention?) but my publisher
tells me that official numbers for PRIME OBSESSION passed the 20,000 mark recently. For a
hardcover book about analytic number theory, published less than 6 months
ago, this is simply sensational. My heartfelt thanks to all the NRO readers
who bought the book. (And, in my opinion, helped kick-start its success.)
To those who haven’t yet: Go buy it! My children are hungry! All sorts of
foreign & translation rights have been sold, so the pygmies of the Congo and
the yak herders of Tibet will soon be able to read about Bernhard Riemann in
their own mysterious tongues, Eskimos will ponder the fabulous Zeta function
by the light of the Aurora Borealis, Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert will
chatter excitedly about Lindeloef’s Hypothesis as they sharpen their
throwing sticks, and the Mandarins of Beijing will murmur in restrained,
inscrutable delight over the eigenvalues of Hermitian matrices.