Scientific American feature-- METER

Richard Blanco:     “An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”

– President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Blanco

RICHARD BLANCO is a professional civil engineer and a poet. He read his poem “One Today” at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, who selected him to serve as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history.  Blanco's inauguration appearance is reported at this link and connection to his inaugural poem is offered there.

    One of my current favorite math-poetry sources is Scientific American -- edited by feminist science writer Dava Sobel and presented each month under the heading Meter.  The selection for December, 2022 was "Uncertain-Sea Principle" by Richard Blanco.  Here are it's opening lines: 

2024 AMS Math-Poetry Contest Winners

     Each year the American Mathematical Society sponsors a student poetry contest-- looking for submissions from students in three categories -- junior high, senior high and college.  This year's winners are:

“An Intriguing Mystery” by Jera Feem V. Forro,  University of the Philippines Visayas Iloilo City High School  

“Meditation on Mathematics” by Chelsea Zhu, Richard Montgomery High School

"Infinity Is Known by Many Names" by Jasmin Mundi, American University

    A poster of the winning poems (shown below) is available for order at this link -- where one also finds You-Tube videos of the poets reading their winning poems.  For more information about the contest and names of honorable-mention poets and previous years' winners, go here.

Happy Birthday, AWM!

      An organization that I celebrate -- though not often enough -- is the Association for Women in Mathematics which celebrates its 53rd birthday today.  Join me in a visit to the AWM website to explore their programs and a visit to this blog post from 3 years ago that celebrates AWM with a poem.

Wordsmith theme -- words from Geometry

      A delightful stimulus to expand my vocabulary is my subscription to "A.Word.A,Day" by Anu Garg -- and each Monday-through-Friday I get an email notification of a new word.  This week's theme is "Words from Geometry" and today's word is tangent -- go here to read, learn, and enjoy Garg's discussion of this word.

    And here is a link to this blog's earlier postings  that include poetic consideration of the term tangent.