Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Symmetry
By Marcus du Sautoy
Fourth Estate £18.99, 376 pages
FT bookshop price: £15.19

German mathematician David Hilbert said that a mathematical theory is not complete “until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street”. Yet of all the sciences, mathematics least lends itself to popular exposition, to simple explanations readily understood by lay people.