"This fascinating account is written like the purest poetry. Marcus du Sautoy's enthusiasm shines through every line of this hymn to the joy of high inte!ligence, illuminating as it does so even the darkest corners of his most arcane universe."

    --Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

"I was gripped by Marcus du Sautoy's The Music of the Primes. I am innu- merate, but this book is so well written, and tells its story so vividly and with such interesting human detail, that even I could follow much of it."

    --Margaret Drabble, The Guardian

 In 1859, German mathematician Bernhard Riemann presented a paper to the Berlin Academy that would forever change the history of mathematics. The subject was the mystery of prime numbers. At the heart of the presentation was an idea that Riemann had not yet proved but one that baffles mathematicians to this day.

Solving the Riemann Hypothesis could change the way we do business, since prime numbers are the lynchpin for security in banking and e-commerce. It would also have a profound impact on the cutting-edge of science, affecting quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and the future of computing. Leaders in math and science are trying to crock the elusive code, and a prize of $I million has been offered to the winner. In this engaging book, Marcus du Sautoy reveals the extraordinary history behind the holy grail of mathematics and the ongoing quest to capture it.

1 Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?

2 The Atoms of Arithmetic

3 Riemann's Imaginary Mathematical Looking-Glass

4 The Riemann Hypothesis: From Random Primes to Orderly Zeros

5 The Mathematical Relay Race: Realising Riemann's Revolution

6 Ramanujan, the Mathematical Mystic

7 Mathematical Exodus: From Gottingen to Princeton

8 Machines of the Mind

9 The Computer Age: From the Mind to the Desktop

10 Cracking Numbers and Codes

11 From Orderly Zeros to Quantum Chaos

12 The Missing Piece of the Jigsaw

Acknowledgements

Further Reading

Illustration and Text Credits

Index