{"id":885,"date":"2015-02-01T00:03:42","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T06:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/?p=885"},"modified":"2015-02-05T13:49:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T19:49:32","slug":"mathematicians-subset-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/2015\/02\/01\/mathematicians-subset-artists\/","title":{"rendered":"$${Mathematicians} \\subset {Artists}$$"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Simon<\/a>

Simon Donaldson, Ampere’s Law<\/em>, 2014. Printed by Harlan and Weaver, Inc. New York. Courtesy of Parasol Press. Inc<\/p><\/div>\n

Certain equations or concepts strike us as beautiful, stunning even. As she walked amongst the aquatints on the wall of Yale Art Gallery\u2019s latest exhibit entitled \u201cConcinnitas\u201d, Jen Christiansen posed the title question of her blog post: \u201cMath is Beautiful, But is it Art?\u201d<\/a>. \u00a0Concinnitas means \u201can elegant or skillful joining of several things\u201d, and its Latin origin made me think about the Latin origins of the word \u201cart\u201d. In Latin, \u201cartem\u201d refers to a practical skill (think \u201cart of blacksmithing\u201d), and also \u201cartus\u201d, meaning \u201cto join\u201d (for instance, joining disparate pieces of information or matter to form a coherent whole, like a sculpture, or a completed puzzle). We now also think of art as stemming from a spark of inspiration that calls the artist to create. In each of these manners, I see the creation of mathematics as an art. Jen Christiansen, the art director of information graphics at Scientific American, also leaned in this direction as she considered the exhibit which consists of responses from mathematicians and scientists to a question: \u201cWhat is your most beautiful mathematics expression?\u201d The responses came from venerable mathematicians and physicists: Michael Atiyah, Enrico Bombieri, Simon K. Donaldson, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Richard Karp, Peter Lax, David Mumford, Stephen Smale and Steven Weinberg. You can see their \u201canswers\u201d online at the website of the Greg Kucera Gallery<\/a>, which is also on the list of galleries exhibiting this portfolio of prints. The idea for the portfolio came from Bob Feldman of Parasol Press, and it was curated by Daniel Rockmore, a math professor at Dartmouth. My favorite was Simon Donaldson\u2019s. Most recently, Donaldson won one of the inaugural Breakthrough Prizes in Mathematics, and his expression is Ampere\u2019s Law. Ampere’s law, which expresses some of the ideas with which a Physics undergraduate might be familiar, implies some connections between topology and physics with the knotting of the \u201cwire\u201d through which \u201ccurrent\u201d is flowing, and with the physical incarnation of the mathematical equation.<\/p>\n

\"As<\/a>

As Ben Volta’s Micro to Macro mural wraps around Morton McMichael school, wraps around the corner and moves north, the imagery becomes cosmic with solar systems and planetary orbits. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)
Courtesy of Newsworks.org<\/p><\/div>\n

It should come as no surprise that certain individuals are working to make the connections between art and mathematics more apparent to the general population, as evidenced by the recently minted acronym S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Eduation, Art, and Mathematics). For example, in a recent interview<\/a> (January 21st<\/sup>) of one the recent Fields medalists, Manjul Bhargava, at NDTV, Dr. Bhargava discusses connections between the Indian musical instrument Tabla and mathematics. He gives an example of the need of a musician to know all possible methods of partitioning eight beats into one- and two-beat sections. Dr. Bhargava uses this as one example of a way to teach mathematics in a more appealing manner that is less \u201crobotic\u201d. Another recent example of the intersection of mathematics and art in education is art teacher\u00a0Ben Vol<\/a>ta\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0work with middle schoolers to create a giant mural inspired by the 1970’s video “Powers of Ten”.<\/p>\n

However, this exhibit really turns the question away from finding intersections between math and art, away from how mathematics influences art or how art influences mathematics, and asks the more direct question of whether mathematicians are artists. \u00a0What do you think?<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Certain equations or concepts strike us as beautiful, stunning even. As she walked amongst the aquatints on the wall of Yale Art Gallery\u2019s latest exhibit entitled \u201cConcinnitas\u201d, Jen Christiansen posed the title question of her blog post: \u201cMath is Beautiful, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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