Thursday, February 28, 2013
Places to go, ideas to see
This first link leads to an hour-long documentary on YouTube on the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920). Prepared in 1987 for the commemoration of Ramanujan's 100th birthday, this documentary honors a mathematical genius from whom we continue, still in the 21st century, to learn. Ramanujan was celebrated earlier in this blog, on 18 February 2011, with a poem by Jonathan Holden.
I want also to direct you to a Scientific American Guest Blog posting on 9 February 2013 by Bob Grumman. Since his first SA Guest Blog posting on 28 July 2012, Grumman has been offering, about once a month, his unique views on the intersections of mathematics and poetry. Primarily interested in visual poetry, Grumman features his own work along with that of numerous other poets -- including e e cummings, Betsy Franco, Scott Helmes, Gerald Kaufman. and Kaz Maslanka. The 9 February 2013 posting features work by California activist Karl Kempton -- and I offer a sample below to encourage you to visit the SA blog for more of Karl's interesting work.
Monday, March 11, 2019
Celebrate Pi-Day on 3.14
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
December 2016 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts
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
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Blog history -- title, links for previous posts . . .
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.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Celebrate 3.14 with poems of Pi
At the 2012 Bridges Conference in Towson MD I had the opportunity to hear "Art of π," a presentation by Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya that told of ways that the special number π has inspired artists and writers. This blog has previously celebrated π -- for example on 6 September 2010 (featuring work by Kate Bush, Robert Morgan and Wislawa Szymborska), 10 September 2010 (mnemonics for π, especially from Mike Keith) , 15 March, 2011,(a poem by Lana Hechtman Ayers) 27 November 2011 (a poem by Brian McCabe).
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Poets for Science -- Poetry Exhibit
In 2017 poet Jane Hirschfeld curated an exhibit entitled "Poets for Science". It was featured in Washington, DC on Earth Day, April 22, 2017, when demonstrators around the world participated in a March for Science, a call to support and safeguard the scientific community. Since 2017 the exhibit has been hosted by various locations. (More information at this link.)
The Poets for Science Exhibition features a Special Collection of human-sized poems banners, with each poem in the collection specifically chosen by Hirshfeld to demonstrate the connection between poetry and a particular area of science, from the Hubble Telescope and MRI machines to childhood cognitive development, biology, ecology, and natural history.
Connection between poetry and mathematics is exhibited by the poem "Pi" by Nobel-prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) (translated from Polish by Clare Cavanaugh and Stanislaw Baranczak (1946-2014)). I offer a portion of the poem below (followed by a link to the complete poem).
Pi by Wislawa Szymborska (translated by Barańczak and Cavanagh)
Saturday, January 3, 2015
2014 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts
Dec 30 Be someone TO COUNT ON in 2015
Dec 28 A Fractal Poem
Dec 25 A thousand Christmas trees
Dec 24 The gift of a poem
Dec 20 The Girl Who Loved Triangles
Friday, September 11, 2015
Songs of mathematics . . .
One of the article's enchanting items is a song for children -- "Circle Song" -- which Lesser has written to the familiar tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"; this lyric offers a way to remember critical formulas for a circle.
Circle Song by Lawrence Mark Lesser
Take your finger 'round the jar:
Circumf'rence equals 2πr!
Thursday, January 2, 2014
2013 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts
Dec 30 Error Message Haiku
Dec 26 The angel of numbers . . .
Dec 23 Ah, you are a mathematician
Dec 20 Measuring Winter
Saturday, January 2, 2016
2015 (and prior) -- titles, dates, links for posts
OR follow these year-number links to go to lists of posts through 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011 -- and all the way back to March 2010 when this blog was begun. At the top of the column to the right is a SEARCH box for the blog and this link leads to a PDF file of searchable topics and names of poets and mathematicians presented herein. Scrolling down the right-hand column leads to a partial list of LABELS that are linked to a list of blogs that contain them.
Dec 31 Precision leads to poetry . . .
Dec 28 Can a woman learn science (or mathematics)?
Dec 24 And now welcome Christmas . . .
Dec 22 Let us not forget . . .
Dec 20 Who put the pie in Pythagoras?
Dec 18 A student writes poetry for a math class . . .
Dec 15 Generalized Pythagorean Theorem--a visual poem?
Monday, December 19, 2016
Numbers for Christmas . . .
o n
t o p
g i v e
l i g h t
f r e e l y
f o r e v e r
a b u n d a n t
b r i l l i a n t
e v e r y w h e r e
Christmas is coming and I have looked back to earlier posts for holiday greetings -- a version of the growing snowball poem above was first posted in 2012 and here, from 2010, is a Christmas verse that celebrates pi:
Friday, February 18, 2011
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Monday, July 11, 2011
Seeking a universal language
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Happy Valentine's Day -- I love SEVEN!
I want to make a mountain to celebrate
the girls and the women they become . . .
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
A blog posting written by ChatGPT 3.5
I have a blog entitled "Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics" and I would like Chat GPT to write a blog posting for me.
From ChatGPT:
Title: Exploring the Symmetry of Numbers: A Mathematical Poetic Journey
Welcome back to " Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics"! Today, let's delve into the captivating world where numbers and poetry intertwine, creating harmonies of symmetry and rhythm. Join me on this whimsical voyage where mathematical concepts dance with lyrical verses, inviting you to see the beauty in both.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Hate Math -- 21 Reasons (NOT) . . .
1 - It's my worst subject.
2 - I failed Algebra in high school.
3 - When I retook Algebra in high school during the final exam the principal announced that the space shuttle had just blown up.
4 - The space shuttle probably blew up because of a mathematical error.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Is mathematics discovered -- or invented?
Monday, August 26, 2013
Celebrating a math-woman
When you find one (or create one) I will be glad to have you send it along.
The lunar crater L Herschel is named for astronomer Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) -- and I have celebrated this math-woman earlier with two fine poems: "Letter from Caroline Herschel" by Siv Cedering , and "Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich. Now Herschel is the focus of a forthcoming book by poet Laura Long, The Eye of Caroline Herschel: A Life in Poems, (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Here, from that collection, is "The Taste of Mathematics: Caroline Herschel at 31" -- this poem also appears, along with a note about the full collection, in the July 2013 issue of The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.
Friday, August 3, 2018
Highlighting Poetry-Math Favorites
The favorite posting, by a large margin, is:
"Mathematical Limericks" posted on March 29, 2010,
"Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . .)" on February 12, 2011,
"Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi" on September 2, 2010.
Two more-recent and popular postings are:
"The World is Round or Flat" on January 8, 2016,
"Celebrate Math-Women" on March 2, 2017.
The list of labels in the lower right-hand column of the blog gives the names of numerous mathematicians and topics that are featured in the blog -- and one may click on any label to retrieve the posts. Additionally, the blog's SEARCH feature may be used to locate postings on a particular topic of interest.
Monday, January 3, 2011
From 2010 -- titles and dates of posts
A scroll through the 12 months of titles below may lead you to topics and poets/poems of interest. Also helpful may be the SEARCH box at the top of the right-hand column; there you may enter names or terms that you would like to find herein.
Dec 31 The year ends -- and we go on . . .
Dec 30 Mathematicians are NOT entitled to arrogance
Dec 28 Teaching Numbers
Dec 26 Where are the Women?
Dec 21 A Square for the Season
Dec 20 "M" is for Mathematics and . . .