Saturday, March 7, 2015
The mathematician, she . . . .
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.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Hyperbolic effects
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Split This Rock 2014
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Geometry . . . a way of seeing
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Poetry by Victorian Scientists
The article has links to poetry by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), William J. Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872), and James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897). Below I offer two of the eight entertaining stanzas from Rankine's poem, "The Mathematician in Love." (This poem and Maxwell's "A Lecture on Thomson's Galvanometer" also appear in the wonderful anthology that Sarah Glaz and I edited -- Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters/CRC Press, 2008, now available as an e-book.)
from The Mathematician in Love by William J Macquorn Rankine
Thursday, January 13, 2022
+ plus magazine . . . living mathematics
One of the very fine sources of interesting and new ideas from mathematics is +plus magazine -- available since 1997 from the University of Cambridge -- at this link. Way back in 2010 they featured a Fib from this blog (at this link) and they have been generous in their mentions of Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters/CRC Press, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me. They also have introduced (at this link) a wonderful collection of scientific Haiku (SCIKU Icon Books, 2014) -- edited by Simon Flynn, written by students at the Camden School for Girls. Here are two samples from that collection:
Gravity
An attractive force
Between all objects with mass
Just like you and me.
Dissolving confusion
To some, solutions
Are answers; to chemists they
Are still all mixed up.
Enjoy exploring this innovative online mathy magazine. |
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Bridges in Coimbra
Newton's binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo.
What happens is that few people notice it.
-- Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos) (1888-1935)
translated from the Portuguese by Francisco Craveiro
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
A poem for your pocket
Hughes' poem "Addition" is found in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008) and was first posted in this blog, along with other poems linked to Black History Month on February 20, 2011.
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Mathematical Modeling
Mathematical Modelling by Sarah Glaz
Mathematical modelling may be viewed
As an organizing principle
That enables us to handle
A vast array of information
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Howard Nemerov's mathematical imagery
Thursday, October 21, 2010
I miss you, Martin Gardner
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Poets who Count
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
MATHEMATICS and POETRY -- a balancing act!
Recently I came across this article in Good Times -- a weekly newsletter from Santa Cruz County in California -- an article that features poet Gary Young and his two poet-sons -- one of whom (Cooper Young) chose to major in mathematics. Quoting Cooper (from the Good Times article -- and referring to his father):
“He didn’t push poetry on me at all,” says Cooper, who recently graduated from Princeton University. “As I was growing up, poetry was always Jake’s interest. I was more of a science/math kind of guy. Then college came around and freshman year, I was looking for a fifth class. I figured I ought to know a little bit about what my father and my brother had dedicated their lives to. So I enrolled in a poetry class. And I really dug it.”
The poetry that I have found by Cooper Young is not mathy -- but it has led me to look back to one of my favorite mathematical poems -- "To Divine Proportion," by Spanish poet Rafael Alberti (1902-99); I offer it below.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Find a Mathy Valentine!
Two of the poems in the anthology that Sarah Glaz and I edited -- Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008) -- have the title "Valentine." Here is the final line of the one by Katharine O'Brien:
. . . won't you be my cardioid?
and the final pair of lines of Michael Stueben's verse:
I love you as one over x,
as x approaches zero.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Math-themed poems at Poets.org
When I read mathy poems by non-maths often I am intrigued by their alterations of correct mathematical statements -- part of "poetic license." Non-maths can use intriguing language that I, with my mathematics background, could not allow myself to say. For example, George David Clark's poem "Kiss Over Zero" has this opening line:
I was delighted to find in this math-themed group several old favorites, one of which is "Counting" by Douglas Goetsch -- a poem among those Sarah Glaz and I gathered a few years back for the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters / CRC Press, 2008) -- now available as an e-book.
Friday, August 15, 2014
My best dream is floating . . .
With the help of a "Google Alert" I found a YouTube video of Alexandria Marie reading "The Mathematics of Heartbreak" at a Dallas Poetry Slam. A link in an email from Texas computer scientist, Dylan Shell, alerted me to these mathematical lyrics (new words for old tunes) in a mathbabe posting by Cathy O'Neil.
As we have been floating from topic to topic, it may be apt to end with the final stanza of my relevantly titled poem:
Monday, July 12, 2010
Poetry-application of The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
A Visit to Mathland -- where Reason rules!
Published in 1979 by PRIMARY PRESS, out of print -- try your library! |
Before purchasing this anthology (found at a math conference) I had never seen a collection of mathy poems -- but then, many years later, I helped to edit one (Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics). Today I offer an old favorite from Against Infinity -- the poem "A Visit to Mathland" by Naomi Replansky (born May 23, 1918):
A Visit to Mathland by Naomi Replansky (for M., Z., and L., citizens thereof)
I was a timid tourist
to the land of mathematics:
how do you behave in a country
where Reason rules?
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Poems with multiple choices of what to read . . .
When you pick up something to read -- a newspaper article, instructions for a new appliance, or a poem, or whatever -- in what order do you read it? For many of us, reading is not a beginning-to-end process but a jumping around in which we survey the scope of what's to be read, look for internal highlights, focus on particular terms, etc. A fascinating exploration of multiple ways of reading a particular poem is a treasure I have found in a blog that I visit often, Poetry and Mathematics by Marian Christie.
Born in Zimbabwe and now living in the UK, mathy poet Marian Christie offers a delightful and informative blog that thoughtfully explores various ways in which the arts of mathematics and poetry are linked. In this January, 2022 blog posting Christie examines what she calls a "multiple choice" poem -- that is a poem that offers multiple ways of reading what the page presents. The poem she considers is one written in 1597 by Henry Lok in honor of Elizabeth I; below I offer a diagram of that poem, copied from Christie's blog.