Four colors will do

     As I work with Gizem Karaali, an editor of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, to plan a reading of mathematical poetry at the JMM (Joint Mathematics Meetings) in Boston on 6 January 2012, my thoughts return to a poetry reading that I helped to organize at JMM in Baltimore in 1992. One of the participants was a friend and former colleague, Frank Bernhart, whose work is guided by the rhythm pattern of a well-known song.
     Bernhart is an expert on the Four-Color Theorem and his poem celebrates its history -- including consideration of its proof (in 1976) by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken. (The theorem asserts that any map drawn on a flat surface or on a sphere requires only 4 colors to ensure that no regions sharing a boundary segment have the same color.)

Math-Stat Awareness Month -- find a poem!

APRIL is Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month
AND
National Poetry Month!

 Celebrate with a MATHY POEM, found here in this blog!  Scroll down!

If you are looking for mathy poems on a particular topic, the SEARCH box in the right-column may help you find them. For example, here is a link to posts found when I searched using the term "parallel."  And here are posts that include the term "angle."   To find a list of additional useful search terms, scroll down the right-hand column. 

For your browsing pleasure, here are the titles and dates of previous blog postings,

moving backward from the present.  Enjoy!

Mar 31  Math and poetry in film
Mar 28  Split this Rock, Freedom Plow Award, April 21
Mar 27  Math-themed poems at Poets.org
Mar 23  Remember Emmy Noether! 

Reaching for the stars . . . with science and poetry

     Astronomer Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley (1941– 1981) made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the evolution of galaxies (See, for example, Wikipedia).  California math teacher, editor and poet Carol Dorf celebrates Tinsley in the following poem. 

       Ask for a universe and what do you get?
                a Golden Shovel for Beatrice Tinsley            by Carol Dorf

       For a while scientists' proposed loopholes
       crossing the universe, wormholes a technique in
       which to traverse distance to other worlds, this

       unpleasant constraint which most reasoning
       holds us to a single solar system or may
       be, just perhaps a transit could exist  

Math films -- and a Pi-song

     A film project worthy of support (and found at this website) is JOURNEYS OF BLACK MATHEMATICIANS: A documentary project by writer and film-maker George Csicery.   Severely underrepresented in mathematics, African Americans have played important roles as researchers and educators in the field. This documentary traces the history of the individuals who worked as pioneers in expanding the presence of African Americans in mathematics.

Go to this link (the same one as sbove) and scroll down for access to the films in Csicery's collection; featured mathematicians include:  Evelyn Boyd Granville, Robert Edward Bozeman, Edray Goins, Johnny L. Houston, Monica Stephens Cooley,  Ulrica Wilson, Omayra R. Orgega, Virginia K. Newell, Scott Williams, Duane Cooper, Talitha M. Washington . . .

     I close with the opening lines of a song, written by Mitchell Moffit and found at this link, that can be helpful in memorizing many digits of pi -- an amazing endeavor that some people undertake.

Teaching math with a poem

Sarah Glaz is an algebraist (University of Connecticut) who uses poetry to teach mathematics. At her web page, scroll down to "Recent Articles" to see titles and links to three such papers.   One of the articles is "The Enigmatic Number e: A History in Verse and its Uses in the Mathematics Classroom" -- and it contains an annotated version of the poem whose opening stanzas are found below; it's found in the Digital Library of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), Loci:  Convergence (April 2010). 

A poetry album by Lucille Clifton

March is Women's History Month and here, today, I celebrate by acknowledging a special woman, Lucille Clifton (1936-2010).  From 1979–1985 Clifton served as Poet Laureate of Maryland.  Her poetry celebrates both her African-American heritage and her womanhood.  Here is "album," a poem in Clifton's spare and un-capitalized style -- and containing a few numbers to help us keep track of the times that are changing.

album     by Lucille Clifton

Blog history -- title, links for previous posts . . .

      My first posting in this blog was nearly eight years ago (on March 23, 2010).  If, at the time, I had anticipated its duration, I should have made a plan for organizing the posts.  But my ambitions were small.  During the time I was teaching mathematics at Bloomsburg University, I gathered poetry (and various historical materials) for assigned readings to enrich the students' course experiences. After my retirement, I had time to want to share these materials -- others were doing well at making historical material accessible to students but I thought poetry linked to mathematics needed to be shared more.  And so, with my posting of a poem I had written long ago celebrating the mathematical life of Emmy Noether, this blog began.  Particular topics featured often in postings include -- verse that celebrate women, verses that speak out against discrimination, verses that worry about climate change.   

You're invited to:
Scroll through the titles below, browsing to find items of interest
among the more-than-nine-hundred postings since March 2010
OR 
Click on any label -- a list is found in the right-hand column below the author profile 
OR
Enter term(s) in the SEARCH box -- and find all posts containing those terms.

 For example, here is a link to the results of a SEARCH using    math women 

And here is a link to a poem by Brian McCabe that celebrates math-woman Sophie Germain.
This link reaches a poem by Joan Cannon that laments her math-anxiety.
This poem expresses some of my own divided feelings.

                                       2017 Posts

December 2016 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts

Here are the titles and dates of previous blog postings,

moving backward from the present.

For mathy poems related to a particular mathy topic -- such as women in math or climate or triangle or circle or teacher or . . . -- click on a selected title below or enter the desired term in the SEARCH box in the right-hand column.  For example, here is a link to a selection of poems found using the pair of search terms "women  equal."  For poems about calculus, follow this link.  To find a list of useful search terms, scroll down the right-hand column. 

     Dec 31  Happy New Year! -- Resolve to REWARD WOMEN!
     Dec 27  Celebrate Vera Rubin -- a WOMAN of science!
     Dec 26  Post-Christmas reflections from W. H. Auden
     Dec 19  Numbers for Christmas . . .
     Dec 15  Remembering Thomas Schelling (1921-2016)
     Dec 12  When one isn't enough ... words from a Cuban poet

Are all mathematicians equal?

My first posting for this blog (on March 23, 2010) featured one of my earliest poems, a tribute to mathematician Emmy Noether (1882 -1935) entitled "My Dance Is Mathematics."  Even as it praised Noether's achievements, the poem protested the secondary status of math-women, not only in Noether's day but also today.  It ends with the stanza :

     Today, history books proclaim that Noether 
     is the greatest mathematician
     her sex has produced. They say she was good
     for a woman.