# A more equitable statement of the jealous husbands puzzle

Every time I use the jealous husbands river crossing problem, I prefix it with a waffly apology about its formulation. You’ll see what I mean; here’s a standard statement of the puzzle:

Three married couples want to cross a river in a boat that is capable of holding only two people at a time, with the constraint that no woman can be in the presence of another man unless her (jealous) husband is also present. How should they cross the river with the least amount of rowing?

I’m planning to use this again next week. It’s a nice puzzle, good for exercises in problem-solving, particularly for Pólya’s “introduce suitable notation”. I wondered if there could be a better way to formulate the puzzle – one that isn’t so poorly stated in terms of gender equality and sexuality.

# Apéryodical: Mini-podcast with Ben Sparks and James Grime

As part of our special Apéry takeover today, I chatted to mathematicians Ben Sparks and James Grime, to find out what we know about the mathematics Apéry did – it’s an enjoyable 10-minute listen.

# Apéryodical: Scratch and sniff ζ plot

Christian’s put together this fun applet for exploring the Zeta function – you can move your pointer around to reveal the value of $\zeta$ at each point in the complex plane.

The hue (colour) revealed is the argument of the value, and the lightness (bright to dark) represents the magnitude. There’s a blog post over at Gandhi Viswanathan’s Blog explaining how it works.

The resulting plot has contour lines showing how the function behaves.

Explore!

# Apéryodical: Roger Apéry’s Mathematical Story

This is a guest post by mathematician and maths communicator Ben Sparks.

## Roger Apéry: 14th November 1916 – 18th December 1994

100 years ago (on 14th November) was born a Frenchman called Roger Apéry. He died in 1994, is buried in Paris, and upon his tombstone is the cryptic inscription:

$1 + \frac{1}{8} + \frac{1}{27} +\frac{1}{64} + \cdots \neq \frac{p}{q}$

Apéry’s gravestone – Image from St. Andrews MacTutor Archive

Roger Apéry – Image from St. Andrews MacTutor Archive

The centenary of Roger Apéry’s birth is an appropriate time to unpack something of this mathematical story.

# Apéryodical takeover: It’s Roger Apéry’s 100th birthday!

Today is the 100th anniversary of Roger Apéry’s birth, and we’re The Aperiodical, so we just had to make a big deal of it.

So, for all of today, we’re The Apéryodical. Throughout today we’ve got a few posts about Apéry and the thing he’s most closely associated with: the Riemann zeta function.

For now, here’s a really big ζ. You’ll need it later.

ζ

# Not Mentioned on the Aperiodical, 10th November 2016

Here’s a round-up of some of the news from this month.

## Never-ending Turing centenary, part XLVI

The Alan Turing centenary shows no signs of abating.

First of all, there’s a marvellous new art installation under Paddington Bridge in London, in memory of Turing. There’s also a theatre piece called Breaking the Code, showing at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre until 19th November.

Secondly, work continues to introduce legislation in the UK pardoning all gay men who were convicted of crimes related to homosexuality, in the same way Alan was a few years ago. Ministers said they were ‘committed’ to getting the law passed, but in an emotional session the bill was “talked out” by minister Sam Gyimah, meaning it wasn’t voted on.

## LMS wins the first Royal Society Athena prize

The London Mathematical Society (LMS) has been honoured this autumn by receiving the first Royal Society Athena Prize to recognise its advancement of diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) within the mathematical community. The prize was awarded in a ceremony at the Royal Society’s annual diversity conference on 31 October.

Royal Society press release

## Fourth Christopher Zeeman medal goes to Rob Eastaway

Mathematician, author and friend of the site Rob Eastaway has received the 2016 Christopher Zeeman medal, awarded to recognise and acknowledge the contributions of mathematicians involved in promoting mathematics to the public and engaging with the public in mathematics in the UK.

There will be an award lecture taking place on 22 March 2017, and details will be announced in Mathematics Today and the LMS Newsletter.

# Principia Reissue Kickstarter

Spanish independent publisher Kronecker Wallis is making a new edition of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematicia, using a Kickstarter campaign to fund the initial print run. Here’s their video:

It looks like it’ll be a fairly pretty object, and they’ve put a lot of time and thought into choosing the paper, fonts and layout. Their Kickstarter runs for around another 24 hours, and a pledge of €45 or more will secure you a copy of the finished article.