Poems and primes

Friday morning, 1-17-2014, looking north from the Baltimore Convention Center

       This past week I enjoyed Thursday and Friday at the Joint Mathematics Meetings at the Convention Center in Baltimore, a time for connecting with some old friends and making some new ones.  I gave a presentation in one of the sessions on the Intersection of Mathematics and the Arts, sharing poems -- such as Sherman Stein's "Mathematician" -- that can help non-maths to understand more clearly the nature of mathematics.  The handout for my talk contained a list of more than thirty poems that can help to communicate the nature of mathematics and it is available for download here. 

Sieve of Eratosthenes

The Sieve of Eratosthenes     by Robin Chapman

He was an ancient Greek
looking for primes,
those whole numbers divisible
only by 1 and themselves,
those new arrivals on the block,
fresh additions to the stock
of indivisibles spilling through
future time (for what is time

Seeking a universal language

Is mathematics a universal language?  Not only is this universality often postulated but also it was said  -- some decades back -- that devices were broadcasting into space the intial decimal digits of pi, expecting that other intelligent beings would surely recognize the sequence of digits.  Robert Gethner examines this arrogance in a poem.

Poems starring mathematicians - 3

Today's poems illustrate the satirical humor and rhyme that frequently inhabit poems by mathematicians. (Previous postings of poems about mathematicians include March 23, April 14, and April 15.)

I Even Know of a Mathematician      by John L Drost

        “I even know of a mathematician who slept with his wife only
                   on prime-numbered days…” Graham said.
                            ―Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

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."

Queneau and the Oulipo

Raymond Queneau was one of the leaders of a group of ten--primarily writers and mathematicians, primarily French--who founded a group, "Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle" ("Workshop of Potential Literature"), that eventually became known as the Oulipo. Queneau described potential literature as "the search for new forms and structures that may be used by writers in any way they see fit."