A Brief History of Mathematical Geniuses

Math, unfortunately, is usually taught, and consequently thought of, as a set of cold, bloodless tools to solve practical and theoretical problems that are somehow removed from real lived experience.

However, the truth of the matter is that math has a fascinating and mesmerizing life of its own, and those who have really confronted its secrets have found it to be a source of love, respect, admiration, inspiration, despair, confusion and wonder. Whatever else it may be, math is not boring... not if you actually pay attention.

In the following set of short documentaries, which you should definitely share with your mathophobe friends, Professor Marcus du Sautoy explores the lives, the insights, the contributions and the influence of some of history's greatest mathematicians.

Newton and Leibniz:
     

Leonard Euler:
     

Joseph Fourier:
     

Evariste Galois:
     

Carl Friedrich Gauss:
     

The Mathematicians who helped Einstein:
     

Georg Cantor:
     

Henri Poincare:
     

Hardy and Ramanujan:
     

Nicolas Bourbaki:
     


What other mathematicians would you have included in this list?

And for a touching and fascinating biography/tribute to Cantor, don't forget to check out the spectacular documentary Dangerous Knowledge.

Landmark Civil Rights Act Made Racism Slightly Less Overt

As we start to celebrate Black History Month, The Onion wants to make sure we remember key historical events that a nation proud of its rich and diverse cultural heritage should never forget.

One such event is the Civil Rights Act, that landmark piece of legislation that finally made it illegal to openly discriminate against black people and women.

Of course, if you could get creative and indirect in your discrimination of these minorities, then that's a completely different story. Then, you're a creative person who should be allowed to freely express that racist creativity in novel, interesting, inconspicuous and unexpected ways. Can I get an Amen?! :)

Why not check the Martin Luther King, Jr. tag while you're here?

The Best Sentence I Read Today

"Most men will not swim before they are able to." Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.

Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf

The Twin Paradox

If you're riding a train and you shoot a gun in the same direction, the total speed of the bullet, relative to the ground, would be the speed of the bullet relative to the gun plus the speed of the train relative to the ground. There's nothing mysterious about that concept.

But what if you decided to shoot your photon torpedo gun (aka, your flashlight, or your torch if you're in England or Australia) under the same conditions? Intuitively, you'd think the speed of the light leaving the flashlight would equal its speed relative to the flashlight plus the speed of the train train relative to the ground, except you'd be wrong.

At the end of the 19th century, and especially thanks to the work of James Clerk Maxwell, there was plenty of evidence to conclude that the speed of light is constant, no matter how fast or in what direction you move relative to it, but no one could understand how this could possibly be so... until Albert Einstein developed his special theory of relativity with an intuition would that would forever revolutionize our understanding of physics: while the speed of light is constant, time and space are relative.

One of the weird consequences of that idea has come to be known as the twin paradox, about which you get to learn in the following funny animation:

Actually, GPS is one of the few applications that combines both special and general relativity in order to work because the Earth's gravitational pull also messes with the curvature of space-time.

Colbert and Maurice Sendak on Children's Books

If you have kids, I hope you've been smart enough to realize that most children's books are written by idiots and celebrities (a distinction usually without a difference) who most likely write for children because they certainly would not be able to read for intelligent and literate adults without getting laughed at. Same goes for plenty of elementary and middle school teachers who diminish from the quality and impact of those teachers who are passionate and dedicated to education.

Of course, I don't know too much about children books myself, especially since I tend to prefer books like Go the F**k to Sleep or lullabies a-la Tim Minchin, but it seems, from the following Stephen Colbert interview below, that Maurice Sendak, author of such classics as Where the Wild Things Are, agrees wholeheartedly:

The Colbert Report
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"And now, the dramatic.... more of it:"

The Colbert Report
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Don't forget to check out the literature tag.

This Is a Galaxy

Ideally, science works by the testing of hypotheses. In the real world, however, hypotheses can't always be tested directly, so scientists have to get creative and figure out indirect ways to see whether hypotheses are at least consistent with our empirical observations. Consistency alone is not sufficient for thinking that a scientific hypothesis is 'correct,' but inconsistency is usually a safe red flag that the hypothesis in question either needs modification or ought to be rejected.

One such attempt to test scientific hypotheses indirectly is to create computer models and simulations based on the very best current knowledge available: you let the simulations run and then see how close a match they make to what we know about the world.

There are many benefits to such an approach, such as the reduced time it takes to run a simulation (as opposed to waiting for the universe to run on its own slow pace). Another is the fact that when you produce visual representations of a computer simulation, you can end up with a beautiful piece of art, as the following short clip demonstrates:

And for more, check out the space tag.

Sex: An Unnatural History - The Revolution

When you think about the sexual revolution, your mind probably focuses on the last half a century, starting with the fact that the development of the contraceptive pill gave couples all over the world, and especially women, unprecedented freedom regarding their own bodies and sexual choices. Ever since then, and with other revolutions in mind (like the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism, etc.), sex has been more about gratification than procreation? Or has it? And did it only start fifty years ago, or does a larger sexual revolution go back for millions of years?

In the first episode of this six-part series, and accompanied by cool historical footage, some clever animation, and some provocative dramatizations, Julia Zemiro sits down and discusses the nature and history of human sex with anthropologists, feminists, nudists, philosophers, biologists, historians, linguists, journalists and others.

Oh, and this may count as NSFW, but that might just mean your job sucks and you need to do something better with your life... think about it.

Stay tuned for more episodes soon!

Doodling in Math - Spirals, Fibonacci and Plants

This girl is so cool I may soon have to create a tag on this blog just for her awesomeness. Last time we saw her, she gave us a nice introduction to how the Fibonacci sequence can give rise to the kinds and numbers of spirals we find in many plants.

Now, talking about plants, and considering the question of the most efficient leave arrangement for them to maximize sunlight for photosynthesis (aka, plant nom-noms), we stumble upon something incredible (that we've also seen before in this stunning animation): an irrational number, but not just any irrational number: the golden ratio!

Over the past two millenia, there's been speculation as to why one of the crazy commands in Pythagoras' nutty religion was to stay away from beans (and the fact that Pythagoras was willing to let himself get killed rather than cross through a field full of these plants).

You see where I'm going, right? I'm going to have to look up their leave distribution, but is it just possible the father of rational mathematics realized bean leaves follow this "irrational" formation and hence refused, as a matter of mathematical principle, to have anything to do with them???

"Dear Professor Hawking"

I had some surgery yesterday, nothing major, but my present inability to move around as much as I'd like may result in fewer blog entries in the near future... or more than usual; we'll see. In any case, as today's entry shows, when you're bed-ridden, there are few better ways to spend your time than listening to an homage to Stephen Hawking :)

Defying medical expectations for an early death by decades, Professor Hawking, perhaps the most famous and popular of all scientists alive, recently celebrated his 70th birthday.

In light of his genius, the obstacles he's had to overcome, his scientific contributions, his celebrity status, his passion for popularizing his love of science in books and documentaries, his correspondence with children and adults throughout the world, and his appearances on The Simpsons, the BBC recently put together a series of audio programs dedicated to celebrating this remarkable man.

He's sold more books than Madonna has had sex... Classic!

But I'm not sure I can let that "philosophy is dead" comment go by without protest :(

Apple Revolutionizes Education?

As you may or may not know, Apple announced last week three initiatives designed to revolutionize education: fully interactive and affordable digital iBook textbooks for the iPad, iBooks Author (for those of you interested in creating your own interactive textbooks) and their new iTunesU app.

Obviously, one would have to purchase an iPad, which is exactly what Apple is banking on, but whatever their economic scheme, it's hard to argue that the educational value one gets in return isn't worth the investment

Now, I'm not usually one to blog about technology and gadgets, but the following presentation is about education, a topic quite dear to my heart, and it will blow your mind:

If you can be kind enough to get my poor ass an iPad, I'll be your bff! :)