This book deserves its title. It could even be called "Live Mathematics"! Indeed, the author shows that mathematicians are human beings like any other and mathematical discovery that shares many commonalities with other human activities. Through his account of the demonstration of a theorem of analysis related to the Boltzmann equation, Cedric Vilani understand that mathematicians are also living beings, with a body, feelings and emotions that play a role in the intellectual process itself. The development of a new theorem does not present the aridity of presentation in a school curriculum. It happens, as geographical exploration or artistic creation, through different phases, sometimes borrowing pathways leading to a dead end, discovering an error that forces to resume calculations that established it was believed, sometimes making a jump through a sudden intuition. Moreover, it is not a solitary adventure, it benefits from all of the mathematician in the world community. The author also sprinkles his tale tasty portraits of mathematicians from different centuries. "Theorem living" should please all readers curious, those who are passionate about mathematics and those who have been put off by the way they are taught in our schools.
