Remembering Sophia Kovalevsky

With Reason: A Portrait     by JoAnne Growney   (June 2012)

        Sophia Kovalevsky *    (1850-1891)

Because she was Russian  . . .
Because she had abundant curly hair . . .
Because she loved mathematics . . .
Because she was born in the 19th century . . .
Because lecture notes for calculus papered  her nursery walls . . .
Because her parents forbade her to leave home . . .
Because a woman could not travel abroad from Russia 
                    without her father or a husband . . .
Because she found a kind man to marry . . .
Because ideas came to her in torrents . . .
Because she married a man she did not love . . .

Is mathematics discovered -- or invented?

The issue of whether mathematics is invented or discovered is posed often.  Less frequently, queries as to where poetry falls in these categories. Perhaps individual answers to these questions depend on how each of us, from the inside, views the workings of the mind.   Here we have, from poet (and math teacher) Amy Uyematsu,"The Invention of Mathematics."  

Poetry and Mathematics -- Similarities

HOW are mathematics and poetry similar?

Often-quoted in mathematical circles are words from mathematician Karl Weierstrass (1815-97): “It is true that a mathematician, who is not somewhat of a poet, will never be a perfect mathematician.”    And from physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955):  "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." More recently, from Lipman Bers (1914-1993): “  . . . mathematics is very much like poetry . . . what makes a good poem—a great poem—is that there is a large amount of thought expressed in very few words."