The preoccupations of mathematicians can seem curious and strange to normal people. They sometimes expend great energy proving results that appear glaringly obvious. One such result is called the Jordan Curve Theorem. We all know that a circle has an inside and an outside, and that this property also holds for a much larger collection of closed curves [TM165 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Detail from Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, and a Jordan Curve representation [image courtesy of Prof Robert Bosch, Oberlin College. Downloaded from here].
Continue reading ‘Simple Curves that Perplex Mathematicians and Inspire Artists’
A fascinating parallel between a brilliant mathematician and an arch-villain of crime fiction is drawn in a forthcoming book – 
The story of William Rowan Hamilton’s discovery of new four-dimensional numbers called quaternions is familiar. The solution of a problem that had bothered him for years occurred to him in a flash of insight as he walked along the Royal Canal in Dublin. But this Eureka moment did not arise spontaneously: it was the result of years of intense effort. The great French mathematician Henri Poincar
We are reminded each year to get vaccinated against the influenza virus. The severity of the annual outbreak is not known with certainty in advance, but a major pandemic is bound to occur sooner or later. Mathematical models play an indispensable role in 
Every circle has the property that the distance around it is just over three times the distance across. This has been known since the earliest times [see 
You must be logged in to post a comment.