Reflections after reading "The Legend of Mathematics"

This book was a prize I won in a competition three years ago. I didn't read it carefully at that time, so I just flipped through a few pages and lost it in the sea of ??books.

In the second semester of the third grade of junior high school, I kept writing the same math problems every day and felt extremely bored. One day after finishing my homework, I suddenly came across this book while taking a nap, so I took it out and read it. Those are familiar yet unfamiliar names: Euclid, Archimedes, Euler, Gauss, von Neumann... Maybe this is what the world of mathematics is like. This book uses novel-like language and a slightly humorous style to blend the originally boring mathematics into history to make it easier for people to remember. Therefore, writers like Mo Yan also praised this book.

I have studied mathematical thinking. I had this course when I first entered junior high school, and I also learned about perfect numbers and affinity numbers. I heard that a man named Thales measured the height of the pyramid. Even at that time, I worked out a theorem by myself and was very happy for a long time. The teacher at that time was a professor from Suzhou University, and he also integrated mathematics into history (this makes mathematics much more interesting). But I was about to take the high school entrance examination at that time, so I naturally didn’t have much time to read this kind of book. Only when everything was settled did I feel at ease to pick up this book and read it. You know, a middle school mathematics teacher will never tell you that Fermat's last theorem was originally just a comment in a mathematics book. Maybe he doesn't know it himself.

The appearance of this book alone is enough for me to keep it in my collection. It has the autograph of the author of this book, Professor Cai Tianxin, on the title page. Professor Cai came to give lectures at No. 3 Middle School. He not only studies mathematics, but is also a poet and a photographer... It is precisely because of his multiple identities that he was able to write such a book.

Maybe one day I can not only write this kind of review here, but use poetry-like language to explain a mathematical formula...