PRECISION vs. IMAGINATION

     In the creation and development of both mathematics and poetry both PRECISION and IMAGINATION are important.  Recently I came across the announcement of a book entitled Poetic Logic and the Origins of the Mathematical Imagination -- written by Canadian professor if semiotics, Marcel Danesi, and part of the Springer-Nature series, Mathematics in Mind,  Here is a link to an overview of Danesi's book.  And, in the publisher's summary of the Danesi book, we find this:

The aim of this volume is to look broadly at what constitutes the mathematical mind through the Vichian lens of poetic logic. 

Reading Danesi's ideas and thinking about my own poetic musings has reminded me of a long-ago poem of mine, "Can A Mathematician See Red?"  I posted this poem in this blog long ago (in August 2011, at this link) -- and I offer it again, below.    

A Mathematician's Villanelle

     One of the most active and effective ambassadors for connections between mathematics and the arts is Gizem Karaali. Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at California's Pomona College.  Poet and writer as well as teacher and researcher, Karaali is a founding editor of Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, a peer-reviewed open-access journal that publishes articles, essays, fiction and poetry with a rich variety of connections to mathematics.

     Recently I rediscovered online one of Karaali's poems, a villanelle published almost ten years ago in the Mathematical Association of America's undergraduate magazine, Math Horizons (February, 2015, Volume 22, Issue 3).

A MATHEMATICIAN'S VILLANELLE       by Gizem Karaali

When first did I learn to cherish the bittersweet taste of mathematics?
Mental torture, subtle joy, doubt and wonder, me in meaning
Must have come later, after the games, the limericks, the lyrics.

Strange ceremonies awaited me, mystical hymns, magic tricks,
After the first gulp of water, the first bite, the first bloodletting.
When first did I learn to cherish the bittersweet taste of mathematics?

A Poem Structured by a Finite Field

       Mathematician Ursula Whitcher is an Associate Editor for the American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Reviews and a poet -- someone whom I first met at a conference, "Creative Writing in Mathematics," at the Banff International Research Station in 2016.  conferences.  She is a versatile writer  -- with a long list of publications available here at her website.

     Here is Whitcher's mathematically-structured poem, "Tuesday," first published in 2019 in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, at this link.

     Tuesday     by Ursula Whitcher

          Sometimes it is not possible to mend
          what’s broken, either if you meant
          to prove something impossible, or else
          to save someone. Your best friend has
          not eaten for six days.  Your father loses things. 
          Your brother lies.
          It’s Tuesday, so the week’s no longer new, and yet
          nowhere near done.
          All you can do is move
          and keep on moving, trust
          time changes shattered things
          and lies once known are maps.

Author’s Note. This poem’s form is taken from the structure of the field with seven elements: the meter, in iambs, follows a pattern based on 5, 4, 6, 2, 3, the nontrivial values taken by powers of 5 (mod 7) as it generates the group of units of the field.

Previous mentions of Ursula Whitcher in this blog are listed at this link.

World's Most Interesting Mathematician

     Angela Tabiri, a young mathematician from Ghana, in July captured global attention by winning the title,  World’s Most Interesting Mathematician. Here is her story!  This accolade was bestowed upon her by The Big Internet Math-Off, a competition held in the US last July.  Here is a link to the finals in the competition in which Angela's winning entry is included.

Go here for Angela Tabiri's math story.

Bridges 2024 -- in Richmond, VA

      As she had done in numerous preceding years, mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz is once again an organizer for a poetry reading at the BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference -- this year to be held in Richmond, Virginia, August 1-5.

Bridges Poetry Reading Website

  Poetry Reading Sunday, August 4, 3:00 - 5:00 pm     

Science Museum of Virginia , Room: RF& P Forum

2500 West Broad Street    Richmond, Virginia

Celebrate Blaise Pascal

      A couple of weeks ago (on June 19) I learned on X (formerly Twitter) that 401 years ago, mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was born -- more info here.  Probably Pascal is best known for the array of numbers called Pascal's triangle -- and that array has influenced poetry as well as mathematics.

    My source of this info about Pascal was an ongoing collection of postings on X by Mathematics & Statistics St Andrews,  @StA_Maths_Stats, which offers lots of historical facts about math and math people.  Their June 19 posting offered this:

Mathematicians that aren't white men . . .

          Who
          can do
          mathematics?
          What about girls and women
          and people of color?
          We need to open
          our eyes and
          our doors! 

      Even though mathematicians are frequently exploring new ideas and patterns of thought, minds often have been closed against recognizing math skills in varied groups of people.  It has taken lots of effort to get math doors opened to women, to people of color.  Here are some informative and inspiring videos:

Journeys of Black Mathematicians (A documentary project by George Csicsery)

Meet a Mathematician:  Dr. Gizem Karaali

Meet a Mathematician:  Dr. Lisa Fauci 

Remembering Bob Grumman . . .

      Recently I discovered an online article -- "Bob Grumman’s mathematical universe: somewhere, minutely, a widening" by mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz) at Synapse International, an international visual poetry gathering, co-edited by Philip Davenport and karl kempton) that celebrates the work of math visual-poet Bob Grumman (1941-2015)..  When I visited the article by Glaz, I also found several other articles that celebrated Grumman -- found here at this link for Issue 7, January 2024.

     Below I post two of  Grumman's Mathemaku -- visual poems that involve mathematical symbols and the brevity of Haiku; one of them is found in the article by Glaz mentioned above and the second is found here (along with others) in an article by karl kempton.

Haiku in Math Class

      One of my recent discoveries of math-poetry is in the activities of Hofstra University professor Johanna Franklin,   Franklin asks her students to compose Haiku and she has recently sent me the following material from various courses and semesters:

Math equals patterns
patterns not everyone sees
patterns we all need.
        (introduction to proofs, Spring 2023)

Why do I have my math students write haikus at the end of the semester? Because I love both poetry and playing with words, and the American conception of a haiku strikes me as a perfect poem for a mathematician: the counting of syllables, the symmetry.

Finite vs. Infinite

     One of my frequent interesting reads is the Quote of the Day #QOTD posted on Twitter by Mathematics & Statistics at St Andrews, @StA_Maths-Stats.  A few days ago I found there the following mathy-poetic and thought-provoking quote by Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1984):

     The infinite 
          we shall do right away. 
     The finite
               may take a little longer.

  [Quoted in D MacHale, "Comic Sections" (first published in Dublin 1993)]

Mathematician, Poet -- Blind to the worth of Women

     As we study mathematics and learn of outstanding mathematicians, many of us do not also learn which of those mathematicians also were poets.  A posting that I found recently in Marian Christie's blog, Poetry and Mathematics, features poetry by  Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-39).

     Maxwell's verse also is featured in the math-poetry anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (A.K Peters, Ltd., 2008);  preview available here at amazon.com.

     Below I offer a stanza from a Maxwell poem (posted in this blog back in December, 2015) -- a stanza that shows the long-mistaken attitude that has existed about inferior abilities of math-women: 

Stories of Women and Girls in Science

The website for Agnes Scott College has a wonderful collection of biographies of math women  -- and today I focus particularly on the story of mathematician Marie-Sophie Germain (1776-1831).   I quote below a few words about Germain:

Sophie began teaching herself mathematics using the books in her father's library. Her parents felt that her interest was inappropriate for a female (the common belief of the middle-class in the 19th century) and did all that they could to discourage her.  

Related to the idea expressed in this quote is a thoughtful poem about Germain by Colorado poet Jessy Randall;  the poem is part of Randall's very special collection Mathematics for Ladies, Goldsmiths Press, 2022 and I offer it below:

Write about a MATH-WOMAN -- and WIN!

     Years ago -- when I was the only woman in the Bloomsburg University mathematics department --  I wrote a poem, "My Dance is Mathematics," about the mathematician Emmy Noether -- and it contained the following lines:

               If a woman's dance is mathematics,
               She dances alone.

But things are changing!  Founded in 1971, AWM (Association for Women in Mathematics) has been actively celebrating the lives of female mathematicians  -- and one of AWM's current and far-reaching activities is a STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST for which students -- in middle-school, high-school, and college categories -- are invited to interview a female mathematician and write about her.  The essay-submission period is December 1, 2023 - February 1, 2024.  Questions may be directed to AWM Essay Contest Organizer, Dr. Johanna Franklin (johanna.n.franklin@hofstra.edu). 

The Thirst to Know HOW MANY?

    One of the important math-poetry projects that I have been involved in is Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics, a poetry anthology collected and edited by mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz and me -- published by AK Peters/CRC Press in 2008 and now available on Kindle and at various online used-book sites.

     A poem in Strange Attractors that I have been drawn to again recently is "Ode to Numbers" by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).  Here are its opening lines: 

from  Ode to Numbers     by Pablo Neruda

          Oh, the thirst to know
          how many!
          The hunger
          to know
          how many
          stars in the sky!   

Celebrate Ada Lovelace -- and all women in STEM

     The second Tuesday in October -- this year, Tuesday, October 10 -- is Ada Lovelace Day..  Details of the celebration planned by The Royal Institution of Science are available here at this link.  A careful biography of this pioneering female mathematician -- Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) -- is available here.

"Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM."  Quote from https://findingada.com/.

Although her father, poet Lord Byron, had no interest in mathematics, Ada's mother, Lady Byron, was supportive as was astronomer-mathematician Mary Somerville (1780-1872) -- who became a longtime friend and math-encourager. (Lots more details of Lovelace's math-life are available here at the St Andrews Math-History website and her pioneering work with the Analytical Engine is featured here.)

      Below is a poem by Twitter poet Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) that celebrates Ada Lovelace.

Chat GPT writes about Emmy Noether

       Learning about AI and exploring its possibilities has been an interesting recent activity for me.  One of my own favorite math-related poems is a poem I wrote many years ago about mathematician Emmy Noether -- and that poem, "My Dance is Mathematics," is available here in this blog at this link.  I offer below a poem from ChatGPT;  my instructions were:  write a poem about Emmy Noether -- and I got this:

     In realms of math where brilliance takes its flight,
     There dwells a star whose radiance shines so bright,
     Emmy Noether, a name of boundless grace,
     A mathematician whose legacy we embrace.

     Born in Erlangen, a spark in her eyes,
     She defied the norms, reached for the skies,
     In a time when women faced a daunting door,
     She pushed it open, forevermore.  

A Nine-Sided Diamond

   One of my much-appreciated math-poetry connections is with Scott W. Williams, a Professor of Mathematics at SUNY Buffalo and author of many scholarly papers and many poems.  In a recent issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) I found (and valued reading) his "Impossible Haiku" -- a series of Haiku-stanzas that play with the Collatz Conjecture -- an unproven belief that for any starting number these two steps, performed in appropriate succession, eventually reach the number 1:

   If the number is odd, multiply by 3 and add 1; if the number is even, divide it by 2. 

Williams' "Impossible Haiku" may be found at this link.      Another mathy poem by Williams (found here at his website) that I especially value is the one that I offer below -- a poem dedicated to his mother.

THE NINE-SIDED DIAMOND by Scott Williams 

A Template for Student Math Poems

      Earlier this month, mathematician, songwriter, and poet Larry Lesser posted a link on Facebook to an article (found here at "The Conversation") about ways that Penn State University Professor Ricardo Martinez combines mathematics and poetry in a course entitled "The Ways Math and Poetry Can Open Your Eyes to the World."   When asked, "What prompted the idea for the course?", Martinex responded:

I have always enjoyed writing poetry. As a high school mathematics teacher, I recall telling my students that everything is and can be connected to math, even creative writing. Then, as a graduate student, I read about people using “I am” poem templates for young people to express who they are through a series of “I am” statements, and I thought to myself, where is the “I am” math poem template? So I created one.

Here is a portion of a template that Martinez has created to use with students: 

Math Biographies at the University of St. Andrews

     One of the very informative and math-related Twitter postings that I follow is @StA_Maths_Stats --which features postings from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.  These include postings that feature mathematicians.  Today's Mathematicians of the day posting features a list of math people (with links to bios) who were born or died on August 10  -- and it includes this quote from Oswald Veblen, topologist and geometer from the United States who died on this date in 1960:

Mathematics is one of the essential emanations of the human spirit, a thing to be valued in and for itself, like art or poetry.

My search at the St. Andrews website for occurrences of the word "poem" led to a list of 179 responses.  Here is the poem I found at the first item on that list:

Winning Math-Communication with Haiku

     Each spring at MoMath (The National Museum of Mathematics in New York City) a contest is held -- for the Stephen Strogatz Prize for Math Communication -- inviting entries in Art, Audio, Performance, Social media, Video, and Writing.  This year's deadline was April 28, 2023 and winners are posted at this link.  (Info about mathematician Stephen Strogatz is available here.)

     This year's winner in the Writing category was "An Exploration of Communicating Math Concepts Through Haiku" by Anaya Willabus  -- a selection from her runner-up entry is shown below and the complete creation by Willabus is available here.

Winning math communication by Anaya Willabus

Previous mentions in this blog of the Strogatz Prize may be found at this link.