Mathematical beauty (nonfiction)

From Gnomon Chronicles
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Mathematical beauty describes the notion that some mathematicians may derive aesthetic pleasure from their work, and from mathematics in general.

They express this pleasure by describing mathematics (or, at least, some aspect of mathematics) as beautiful.

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music."

Bertrand Russell

In the News

Fiction cross-reference

Nonfiction cross-reference

External links:

  • Mathematical beauty @ Wikipedia
  • Decoding the Mathematical Secrets of Plants’ Stunning Leaf Patterns - "A Japanese shrub’s unique foliage arrangement leads botanists to rethink plant growth models" (Maddie Burakoff @ Smithsonian Magazine: June 6, 2019)
    • "... certain leaf arrangements continue to stump popular models for plant growth, including the Douady and Couder equations (known as DC1 and DC2) that have dominated since the 1990s. A team led by University of Tokyo researchers studying a shrub known as Orixa japonica found that earlier equations couldn’t recreate the plant’s unusual structure, so they decided to rethink the model itself. Their updated model, described in a new study in PLOS Computational Biology, not only reproduces the once-elusive pattern, but it also may describe other, more common arrangements better than previous equations, authors say."