Apology of Mathematics

People and animals, plants, buildings, works of art can be beautiful, but can mathematics be beautiful? Godfrey Hardy, who referred to his profession as pure mathematics, left the world a remarkable and still popular work among enthusiasts of the exact sciences worldwide, Apology of Mathematics, dedicated to the distinctive philosophy of mathematics—a pure science, a brilliant game of the mind, a free flight of intellectual imagination, which the author compared to the inspiration of a poet, artist, or chess player. The main object of his admiration, his muse, becomes number theory—mathematics for the sake of mathematics, a scientific analogue of the long-beloved concept of pure art among the British. Mathematics, devoid of applied triviality and ugliness, is also beautiful in that it is incapable of causing harm to humanity.