The mathematician, she . . . .

     Tomorrow, March 8, is the International Day of the Woman -- and I celebrate the day with mixed feelings.  YES, there are many women I want to celebrate. BUT WHY are they not celebrated daily, equally with men? And a more specific concern, WHY, when the word "mathematician" is used, is the person assumed to be a man. (There is, on the other hand, a nice non-gendered neutrality in numbers -- as in this first stanza of "Numbers," by Mary Cornish, found below.)
      In this posting I celebrate Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906-1992) -- a mathematician with a doctorate from Yale, a navy admiral, a computer scientist who led in the development of COBOL, an early (c.1959) programming language.  A person I had the good fortune to meet when she visited Bloomsburg University in 1984 to receive an honorary Doctor of Science Degree.  Hopper was imaginative and articulate; here is some poetry found in her words.

                               If it's a 
                               good idea,
                               do it.  

Poetry generators

Blogger edde addad had an undergraduate major in creative writing -- and later earned a PhD in computer science.  He has written about and created poetry-generating programs. addad is one of the contributors to the blog Gnoetry Daily -- which offers ongoing discussion and examples of collaborative human-computer poetry generation.  Here is  "Mystery" -- a poem generated by eGnoetry (assisted by addad!):

Celebrating Newman's "World of Mathematics"

Lionel Deimel is a database and Web site designer, a steam locomotive enthusiast, a cat lover, an essayist and a poet who maintains an eclectic website entitled Lionel Deimel’s Farrago.  There I found a small poem about one of my most-valued literary treasures, The World of Mathematics, a four-volume collection compiled with commentaries and notes by James R Newman, first printed in 1956. The range of topics is vast and the primary requirement for reading is not calculus but curiosity.  Sections of Volume 4 include "Mathematics in Literature," "Mathematics as a Culture Clue," and "A Mathematical Theory of Art." (You should not be without this fine collection.)    Here is Deimel's poem: