Chicago undergraduate mathematics bibliography

This is an annotated bibliography of books that may be useful to undergraduates in pure mathematics. I wrote the original version, with the help of some classmates, during my final year (1997-98) at the University of Chicago. To my great surprise, it has been useful to many people over the intervening years, and I am now maintaining it and accepting contributions on Github.

I am not a "real mathematician", though some of the other contributors to this bibliography have since gone on to become such. I'm just some guy; I write software for a living, and try to learn small bits of math in my smaller bits of spare time. As you read, I ask that you forgive the arrogance and ignorance of a younger me, who knew everything, and take this resource as it was intended: as a guide that might help another student find their way.

Contents

• Elementary
• Intermediate
• Advanced

In addition, the original text (as of January 1999) will remain available:

• Original text

Contributors

Reviews not marked, or marked with [CJ], were written by me, Chris Jeris. Other contributors are marked; thanks to all of them for their input:

• Contributors to the original: Pete Clark; Pete Storm; Ben Blander; Rebecca Virnig; Ben Recht; Marci Gambrell; Yuka Umemoto.
• Contributors since 2014: G Tani, Sayantan Khan.

Other similar resources

[G Tani] Some other similar resources and lists:

• How to Learn Math and Physics, by John Baez
• The syllabus of the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos (PDF)
• How to Become a Pure Mathematician (or Statistician)
• So you'd like to... Get Maturity in Pure Mathematics for Grad School

Republication

I have become aware of the existence of sites reproducing the material of this bibliography with Amazon affiliate links attached. As I understand it, the Creative Commons license under which the bibliography is licensed permits them to do so. I do not endorse any such monetized republication, and I politely request that readers not support it.

Contributing

Pull requests, with either new books or new reviews of existing books, are welcome. I reserve the right to request edits to contributions, but I will always ask your approval for the final text.

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-SA).

Disclaimer

This work is not in any way sponsored or approved by the University of Chicago or any part thereof, though I hope they don't mind the shout-out. Chicago was a fantastic place to study math in the 1990s, and I hope it still is.