Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A Mathematician's Apology is a 1940 essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy. It concerns the aesthetics of mathematics with some personal content, and gives the layman an insight into the mind of a working mathematician. In the book's title, Hardy uses the word "apology" in the sense of a formal justification or defense, not in the sense of a plea for forgiveness. Hardy felt the need to justify his life's work in mathematics at this time mainly for two reasons. Firstly, at age 62, Hardy felt the approach of old age and the decline of his mathematical creativity and skills. By devoting time to writing the Apology, Hardy was admitting that his own time as a creative mathematician was finished. In his foreword to the 1967 edition of the book, C. P. Snow describes the Apology as "a passionate lament for creative powers that used to be and that will never come again". In Hardy's words, "Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics.

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