The London Mathematical Society, as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations, is running a project entitled Local Heroes, in which they have encouraged and funded local museums to put on exhibits about mathematicians from their area. The funding was allocated in 2014, and during 2015 various exhibits have been taking place in different parts of the UK, each celebrating a local number hero.
EDIT: the Lincoln exhibit has been extended until 3rd November – details below.
Invented in 1974, patented in 1975 and released for sale in Hungary in 1977, Rubik’s Cube could certainly be considered to have reached its 40th birthday this year. To celebrate, inventor Ernő Rubik has helped put together a special exhibition at Liberty Science Centre, New Jersey, celebrating the history of the hexahedral enigma. The exhibition, called ‘Beyond Rubik’s Cube’, opens on 26th April for several months.
Put away your calculators – the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has announced that it will host an exhibition all about John Napier to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of his treatise on logarithms, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio.
Napier’s pioneering work on logarithms offered simple and elegant solutions to previously laborious and error-prone calculations; enabling more calculations to be completed in an hour than had previously been completed in one day. From the introduction of the decimal point to the development of slide rules and ‘Napier’s rods’, this exhibition will explore how Napier’s revolutionary innovations advanced and influenced mathematics from the 17th Century to the modern day.
Power of Ten will run from 28 March to 6 July, and entry is free.
National Museums Scotland Exhibitions for 2014
John Napier to tax modern minds 400 years on, in The Scotsman
A translation of Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio by Ian Bruce
Event page at Edinburgh Napier University
via GHS Mathematics Department on Twitter