I first knew of mathematician Irving Kaplansky (1917-2006) through his monograph, Infinite Abelian Groups -- it was one of my texts for a graduate seminar (with Gene Levy) at the University of Oklahoma in the 1960s. Later I knew Kaplansky as a songwriter, author of new lyrics for "That's Entertainment." Kaplansky's adaptation, "That's Mathematics," dedicated to his former student, math-musician-songwriter Tom Lehrer, and to his daughter, singer Lucy Kaplansky, is given below.
In 1999, in Science News, writer Ivars Peterson (now Director of Publications for the MAA -- Mathematical Association of America) wrote an article about Kaplansky's songwriting in which he mentions his daughter, Lucy Kaplansky, a singer who frequently performs her father's songs. A YouTube recording of Lucy singing "The Song of Pi" (in which there is a correspondence between musical notes and the first fourteen digits of pi) is available here. (Lyrics for "The Song of Pi" and information about the correspondence are available in Peterson's article.)
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Thursday, September 12, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2019
A Multi-Author Poem Celebrating Math-People
At the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore last Friday evening, the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) and SIGMAA-ARTS sponsored a poetry reading.
Mathematicians are meeting today—
ideas unfold in space, time, and hearts.
Math is the language of everyone
Any part of everything began as a sum.
Moderated by Gizem Karaali, the pre-reregistered participants included
Lawrence M. Lesser, Sarah Glaz, Ben Orlin, Rachel Levy, Luise Kappe,
Brooke C. Johnston, Douglas Norton, Claudia Gary, JoAnne Growney
In addition to poems by participants registered in advance, the event included a "crowd-sourced" poem. Each person attending was invited to submit two lines of poetry about math-people -- and the pairs of lines were put together into a poem that I offer below. MANY THANKS to these participants who gave us lines.
Order of contributors (2 lines each): David Reimann, Maru Colbert, Greg Coxson,
David Flesner, Nancy Johnston, Kate Jones, Hunter Johnston, Debra Bordeau (4 lines),
Luise Kappe (in German—with translation at end), Margaret Kepner, Thomas Atkinson,
Brooke Johnston, Andrew Johnston, Ximena Catpillan, Bronna Butler, Courtney Hauf,
JoAnne Growney, Doug Norton, Sean Owen, Eric Marland
Sending THANK-YOU to all of the authors,
I present below our poem, "We Love Mathematics."
We Love Mathematics
ideas unfold in space, time, and hearts.
Math is the language of everyone
Any part of everything began as a sum.
Friday, August 3, 2012
JHM -- many math poems
In the wake of the BRIDGES math-art conference at Towson University last week I also want to mention the lively blog posting about BRIDGES by Justin Lanier at Math Munch.
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