Was it necessary for a 17th century painter to know principles of optics to hide a skull in one of his masterpieces? Is it possible the violent deaths of Roman emperors obey a statistical law? Are there connections between market trends and geometry? How did Islamic artists draw almost perfectly regular nine-sided polygons, when these cannot be traced with the use of compasses? Dirk Huylebrouk asks these and other exciting questions in this collection of essays, originally written for the science magazine EOS, a Dutch equivalent of Scientific American, distributed in Belgium and in The Netherlands. Every chapter can be read independently, as some subjects are repeated, and not strictly interconnected. Such is the case for instance of the golden section, an often-recurring topic in general mathematics. The reader will appreciate the original point of view expressed through each chapter, which makes this book stand out against the general information one can find by browsing the general media. The subtly provocative character of some parts is meant to stimulate the reader for further exploration. The book's title itself may already generate surprise. Sure, to many, mathematics seems to come from hell, but the darkness in the title in fact refers to the lugubrious stories about math and skulls, murders or World War II. There is also a more down-to-earth part is about math and maps, money, Facebook, folding paper, shapes in ice and the most earthly yet unsolved math problems. ‘Bright mathematics’ alludes to Vedic, Islam, New Age, a meta-divine section, and is concluded by an interview with a top mathematician who also wrote about the existence of God.
Author(s): Dirk Huylebrouck
Series: Copernicus Books
Edition: 1
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: xvii; 241
City: Cham
Tags: Mathematics, general, Applications of Mathematics
Foreword
Introduction
Contents
Part I Math from Hell
1 Hell, Earth and Heaven in One Painting
Holbein’s Deformed Skull
Myth in the Museum
Through a Glass
Hungarian Escher
2 Hitler’s Math
Counting with the Nazis
National Socialist Math Problems
Propaganda Issues
New Order Math Problems
War Mathematics
Current Issues
Pamphlets with Issues
Post Scriptum
3 Guernica
Picasso’s 1937 Masterpiece
Picasso on the Warpath
Geometry and Guernica
Endless Tinkering
To This Day
4 Architect-Alchemist
Racist Proportions
Modulor
‘Mathematics’ by Le Corbusier
Deliberately Wrong
Golden Ratio Buildings
5 War Hero, Math Genius, Martyr
Ultimate Recognition for Gay Icon and Top Scientist Alan Turing
Life and Work
The Turing Test
Mathematical Nuance
A Tragic Death
Repentance Comes After Sin
6 Murder and Higher Math
Prisoners Find Their Passion in Numbers and Formulas
Food, Math, Sleep
Havens’ Continued Fractions
‘Held Back’ from Congresses
7 Murdering Emperors
Mathematical Intrigues
Survival Statistics
Power Curves
Meaningfulness
Applicable Today?
8 When the Dead Talk in Code
After the Zodiac Killer and Langrenus, an Altar Code?
Cryptography or Abbreviations?
Echo of the Merovingians
Magritte’s Surrealism
Contemporary Opinion
Part II Down-to-Earth Math
9 Columbus’s Reference Line on Earth
Georg von Peuerbach
Oradea Today
Each His Own Meridian
10 Mathematical Stock Advice
Financial Astrology
Holy Geometry
Stock Markets
Stock Geometry
Fake Predictions
11 The Fall of the Lottery
Coincidence or not?
There’s Something Going on
Misled Intuition
A Statistical Case?
12 The Mozarts of Mathematics
From Greyhound to MIT
Magic and Origami
Playful Mathematics
Mathematical Improvisation
Light-Hearted
Update
13 Cold and Austere Beauty in Harbin, China
An Icy Collaboration
Hyperboloids and Cones
Ice Construction Research
14 Your Friends Are More Popular
The Math of Facebook and Twitter (X)
Scale-Free Networks
Power of Algorithms
15 The Most Down-To-Earth Problem
Mathematics with a Warning
Vain Attempts
Tao Tried His Luck
Second Opinion
16 Meccano Math
Nobel Meccano
Meccano Polygons
Hands-On Mathematics
Part III Math from Heaven
17 Mathematical Meditation
A Vedic Math Hype
Magical Mathematics
More Sutras
Modern Fantasies
18 Did Newton’s Apple Fall First in India?
Did Jesuits Import Calculus from India?
Mathematics from Kerala
What Went Wrong?
19 Allah’s Nonagons
Mathematical Embellishments
Surprise: Nonagons
Mystery
20 Is Mathematics Halal?
Mathematics is Evil
Bad Grades
A Great Past
Mathematics Becomes Meaningless…
…And Meaningful Again
21 The Church’s Perspective
Perspective and Parallel Projection
A Mixed Form: The Fishbone Representation
Reverse Perspective
Mathematical Saints
22 The Flower of Life
New Age Math
Tetrahedra
Spatial Stacking
23 A Meta-Divine Nautilus
A Beautiful Shell
Shell Statistics
A Meta-Divine Ratio
Similarities with the Divine Number
A New Myth?
24 Happiness in Unprovability
An Interview with Harvey Friedman
About His Work
A ‘Simple’ Unprovable Mathematical Statement
Miscellaneous Questions
References
