Double Maths First Thing is like a colossal hedgehog overlooking Catania airport.
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in maths.
One person who did that, tirelessly and relentlessly, was my dear friend Adam Atkinson, who died a few days ago. He had been ill for some time. He was an absolute giant of the recreational maths community, an incredibly clever and generous chap, and he’ll be sorely missed wherever geeks gather. Here’s his Heavy Boots story from G4G in 2016.
This week’s links
I was reminded recently of the shameful treatment mathematicians have meted out to ants over the decades, and Sam Hartburn‘s efforts to highlight and put a stop to them. Her song, The Ant’s Lament is part of that campaign.
Someone else who mistreated ants terribly — forcing them to crawl around Möbius strips, etc., was Dutch artist M. C. Escher. I’m eagerly waiting for the library to get hold of Visions of Symmetry by another G4G legend, Doris Schattschneider.
Escher spent some time at the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain; I was delighted to read recently that all 17 wallpaper groups have been discovered there, although I understand that this claim is not uncontroversial.
Someone who, to the best of my knowledge, has never mistreated an ant is Julia Evans; she has, however, produced a large number of zines on computer science topics, many of which have maths subtexts; my favourite blog posts of hers are No feigning surprise and A-A testing, a smart idea that’s quite obvious once it’s explained clearly.
That’s all I’ve got this week! In the meantime, if you have friends and/or colleagues who would enjoy Double Maths First Thing, do send them the link to sign up — they’ll be very welcome here.
If you’ve missed the previous issues of DMFT or — somehow — this one, you can find the archive courtesy of my dear friends at the Aperiodical.
Meanwhile, if there’s something I should know about, you can find me on Mathstodon as @icecolbeveridge, or at my personal website. You can also just reply to this email if there’s something you want to tell me.
Until next time,
C
