This is a short report about a conference on Mathematics and Music. In presence. In the United States. With a vibrant community of researchers. Because in a crazy world it is more important than ever to hold on to beautiful things. In the conference logo, you can see a peach, a symbol of Atlanta, with a torus of musical intervals […]
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Math, Art, Tessellations: an Intervie...
Mathematicians, to prove their theorems, write on blackboards, paper, and parchment; as history tells us, even sand, like Archimedes. One uses clay. Here we present the work of Robert Fathauer, a physicist/engineer/mathematician with a special skills for the arts, from clay modeling of mathematical forms to computer-coded tessellations. His recent book "Tessellations" summarizes years of science, […]
The Smile of Math: When Categories In...
Category Theory is a branch of mathematics born during the 1950's of last century to model several branches of mathematics with the aid of points, arrows, and diagrams. Categorical thinking has proven to be useful in other disciplines as well, and thus, applied categories have been developed. We talked about this in another post. Books about category theory seem to be […]
“Klein Concert”: a Report on a Geomet...
We often hear about youth lost in the world of alcohol and drugs, but less often of young people pleasantly immersed within geometry. And because geometry is a mathematical concept, and it is possible to investigate a bottle's curvature, as well as any liquids including alcohol which may be expressed meticulously via precise laws of […]
Why Physics Matters. An Interview wit...
Why do we need theoretical research in physics? What did it mean to be a young physicist in the Soviet Union? And finally, which characteristics should a good student of physics have? Dirac medalist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Mikhail Shifman answers these questions and more for Math is in the Air. […]
A quest for beauty and clear thinking...
John Baez is an American mathematical physicist, and a professor of mathematics at the University of California Riverside, and an activist for the environment. I have been in touch with him via email and through his online course on category theory. Recently, I had the pleasure to met him in person in London, during a […]
Creative Mathematics: An Application ...
By Maria Mannone PANGOLIN (Ground Pangolin, manis temminckii) A pangolin curled up in the defensive position: When the pangolin is frightened, it curls up, becoming a sort of armored ball that the predatory animals are not able to open, but easy to be caught by poachers. The pangolin is characterized by a strong scale […]