Lieber's INFINITY -- poetic prose

It has surprised me to discover that some of my best-remembered learning took place at the hands of teachers I did not particularly like.  One of these was a professor who introduced me, via outside reading assignments, to books by Lillian R. Lieber (1886-1986).  Her free-verse-style lines in Infinity:  Beyond the Beyond the Beyond gave me insights into the calculus I had recently completed as well as the set theory of my current course. (Lieber wrote not just as a mathematician but also as a human being, as a wonderfully informed and openly opinionated person.  For this, too, I treasure her work.)

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of ... Mathematics

     One of my favorite mathy authors is Lillian R. Lieber (1886-1986) and one of the websites that has recently featured her work is the energetic and eclectic brainpickings.org (authored by Maria Popova) -- in a posting recommended to me by my Bloomsburg, PA poetry-friend Carol Ann Heckman.  Carol alerted me to a January 2018 brainpickings posting about Lieber -- a writer whose poetic treatise, Infinity: Beyond the Beyond the Beyond (Paul Dry Books, 2007) is a reading I once recommended to her as an aid in understanding calculus.  Originally published in 1953 and illustrated with striking drawings by Lillian's collaborating husband, Hugh Lieber, Infinity also had enriched my own understanding of some challenging concepts.  The Heckman-recommended posting offers ideas from an out-of-print gem by Lieber entitled Human Values and Science, Art and Mathematics -- and here are a few opening lines from that collection that seem very relevant today:
   
     This book is really about
     Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,
     using ideas from mathematics
     to make these concepts less vague.  

Glances at Infinity

Counter-intuitive notions are among my favorite parts of mathematics and, in considerations of infinity, these are numerous.  Recalling Zeno's paradox, we capture the infinite finitely in this summation:

     1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/2³ + . . . + 1/2ⁿ +   . . .    =  1

Using mathematics in the Pursuit of Happiness

     One of my favorite blogs to visit is Maria Popova's Brain Pickings -- occasionally Popova's posts link mathematics and poetry    Here is a screen-snip of a Brain Pickings posting featuring verse by Lillian R. Lieber (1886-1986) -- one of my favorite math-writers.

From Lieber's 1961 book, Human Values: Science, Art, and Mathematics

Here is a link to this blog's previous mentions of Lillian Lieber.

Is Math for Women?

At a River Poets reading at the public library in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania on December 1, 2011, Carol Ann Heckman surprised me with her poem, "The Calculus Road Not Taken," presented below.  Not only is she a fine poet, but Carol Ann is curious about mathematics.  As a college student she was turned away by negative feedback from a math professor. But now she is reassessing her situation and ready to tackle calculus. Here she has fun with her calculus-deprived situation in lively verse:

The Calculus Road Not Taken   by Carol Ann Heckman  

               for JoAnne Growney

If I had only conquered
calculus
this wouldn't have
happened--the flood,
the earthquake, the
two hurricanes
in succession

From 2011 -- dates, titles of posts

List of postings January 1 - December 31, 2011
Scrolling 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 30  Good Numbers
Dec 26  A mathematical woman
Dec 22  Counting on Christmas
Dec 20  Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination
Dec 17  Ruth Stone counts
Dec 14  A puzzle with a partial solution
Dec 11  Poetry captures math student
Dec  8  Monsieur Probabilty
Dec  5  Poetic Pascal Triangle
Dec  2  Mathematics works with witchcraft