J.-M. De Koninck: Those Fascinating Numbers

摘要

It may well be that this volume is different from what the reader is braced for. Apart from a couple of very short introductory paragraphs, this book is a collection of numbers, in natural order, starting with 1. On 408 pages it presents integers, one after the other, each of them noted with some of its number properties. Number 38, for one, is described as the largest even number which cannot be written as the sum of two odd composite numbers. A corresponding footnote even proves this proposition. As far as I can see, the smallest integer which does not show up in the list, is 85. Sure, this is nothing you have to keep in mind.