History of Mathematics
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A discourse on why I am so fascinated with the history of mathematics will have to wait until I have lots of hobby time. In the meantime, as eye candy, here are some scans of the front covers of my favourite books on the subject. Click the images to pop-up enlargements.

Extract from The Music of The Primes p.146-147 for Lynne

Ramanujan's death came as a great shock to Hardy, who only two months before had received a letter which 'was quite cheerful and full of mathematics'. Hardy was devastated to be deprived of such a wonderful travelling companion in his hikes across the mathematical terrain. 'His originality has been a constant source of suggestion to me ever since I knew him and his death is one of the worst blows I have ever had.'

As Hardy grew older, he was himself beset by depression. He had always been someone who thought of himself as young. Now the sight of his old face repelled him, and he would always insist on reversing all the mirrors when he entered a room. He hated the effect of age on his abilities to do mathematics, and his volume A Mathematician's Apology is a haunting account of a mathematician at the end of his career. To do mathematics, a mathematician 'must not be too old. Mathematics is not a contemplative but a create subject; no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or desire to create; and that is apt to happen to mathematicians rather soon.'

Like Ramanjuan before him, Hardy too was to attempt to take his own life, by pills rather than jumping in front of a train. But he vomited them up and was left with a black eye. C.P. Snow recalls his visits to the sick Hardy. 'He was self-mocking. He had made a mess of it. Had anyone ever made a bigger mess?' Hardy's one consolation, he wrote in the Apology, was Ramanujan. 'I still say to myself when I am depressed and find myself forced to listen to pompous and tired people "Well, I have done one thing you could never have done, and that is to have collaborated with Littlewood and Ramanjuan on something like equal terms."'