Mathematics and Art: a cultural history

Mathematics and Art: a cultural history - Lynn Gamwell ****

I have to start by saying that I have never really understood the point of coffee table books. There is no way anyone is going to comfortably read Mathematics + Art as it's around 25 cm by 32 cm, and weighs in at a wrist-crunching 3 kg, heavier than many laptops. (The price is fairly wallet-crunching too.) Although it is heavily and beautifully illustrated, though, this is much more than just a picture book of images with a mathematical association. It is a genuinely interesting text, running across over 500 pages, which I found I liked far more than I wanted to.

While there is, as is often the case with this kind of attempt to link science and the arts, sometimes a rather tenuous link to the mathematics, it is still fascinating to discover how the influence of maths on culture at large has had an impact on the arts. Sometimes this is in a quite explicit form, where an image, say, is mathematically derived or features a mathematician at work, while on other occasions it's a much more subtle connection where a topic or context is derived from the way mathematics is influencing the world at large.

Lynn Gamwell does not shy away from including a surprising amount of detail about the maths itself, with occasional boxes explaining everything from calculus to the double slit experiment in quantum physics. Her writing style feels rather closer to that of a textbook than a work intended for a wide audience, but it is nonetheless reasonably approachable, and time and again the illustrations capture the attention and the imagination.

An oddity, then - but a genuinely interesting one.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Why Don't Things Fall Up? - Alom Shaha *****

At first glance, Alom Shaha's book is another of those compact hardbacks with six or seven essays that have done so well in the popular science field since Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons in Physics . Even the subtitle 'and six other science lessons you missed at school' suggests this. But in reality, Shaha is doing something far more original and interesting. Popular science for absolute beginners. The thing is, most popular science titles are written either by scientists or professional science writers who typically have a science-based degree. Shaha is, indeed, such a science writer, but he is also a secondary school science teacher. Scientists rarely grasp how to present science in a way that doesn't assume a reasonable amount of pre-knowledge. Science writers are usually better than this, but tend to favour the exotic and exciting bits of science, which often means going into more depth than many readers feel comfortable with. This is genuinely a book on science

Alom Shaha - five way interview

Alom Shaha was born in Bangladesh but grew up in London. A science teacher, writer and filmmaker, he has spent most of his professional life sharing his passion for science and education with the public. Alom has produced, directed and appeared in a number of TV programmes for broadcasters such as the BBC, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and the Nuffield Foundation. Alom has represented his community as an elected politician and has volunteered at a range of charitable organisations. He teaches at a comprehensive school in London and writes for a number of online and print publications. His new book is Why Don't Things Fall Up? Why science? Honestly, because I had a couple of great teachers at school who made it make sense and come alive for me and, perhaps more importantly, made me believe it was something I could do. Why this book? It’s the book I’ve been wanting and meaning to write ever since I had my first book pu

Nuclear Fusion - Sharon Ann Holgate ****

Nuclear fusion should, in principle, be the perfect addition to renewables as we move away from greenhouse gas generating energy sources. Yet, more than 60 years after it was first suggested, we still don't have a single working nuclear fusion power station. (If, as the subtitle suggests, this has been a race, it has been a walking backwards three-legged race.) Sharon Ann Holgate provides a compact introduction to what nuclear fusion is, the various steps along the road that have been made so far, and why it has taken so long. Starting with fusion as the power source of the stars, we discover the difficulty of keeping the tricky, twisty ultra hot material in the fusion reactor under control when using magnetic confinement, look at the two main technical approaches (and variants), the sheer scale of the engineering challenge, what is underway with ITER and more, along with the potential for the future. Although this is an area beset with disappointments, one where we always seems to

Search This Blog