Beauty, Truth, Math, Art
Last month, thousands of mathematicians attended the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Boston – the largest annual gathering of its kind. In addition to presentations on phylogenetic algebraic geometry and trace formulas, the conference featured an art exhibition, with 80 artists presenting more than 120 works.
Gabriele Meyer is a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Math Department – she crochets colorful “hyperbolic surfaces” (imagine a rainbow fluorescent head of lettuce). “In math if you want to prove something really beautiful, you have to understand the structure,” she explains. “And the structure means you understand the beauty of an object and with that knowledge you often times can make a very important and deep proof. That’s why beauty matters tremendously in mathematics.”
Video: Mathematical Art