The Mathematical Association of America is throwing a big mathematical party at the moment in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s called MathFest 2012 and promises to be “informative, inspiring, and productive.”
Our intrepid schoolboy reporter Colm Mulcahy is in attendance, and will be sending in pictures and thoughts throughout the three days of the event.
Have a look at this trailer for a new film about maths:
A new post is available over at Second-Rate Minds by Samuel Hansen.
I interview a lot of mathematicians and one of my favorite topics is the origin story, the why behind their study of mathematics. I have received answers that range from heavy Martin Gardner influence to falling in sideways from engineering. One thing that I have not received is the story of a …
Read the full post: “The Moment“
Tony Mann attended the Atiyah/Villani(/Stewart) event at Tate Modern yesterday and wrote a review of this for his blog. He discusses several interesting ideas from the discussions – “a few that resonated with me” – including on problem solving, history and the practice of doing mathematics in relation to art, barriers and the place of blackboards.
Tony notes that the event was being recorded so we might look forward to a recording that can be viewed later.
Read Tony’s review: Atiyah and Villani at Tate Modern – the value of blackboards.
The campaign to make access to scholarly literature fairer and broader has been picking up steam and moving quite quickly lately, so I thought it would be a good idea to collect the recent news about open access, the Elsevier boycott, and so on, all in one place.
To help you catch up with the story so far, the Guardian have published a (free) roundup of content on the “Academic Spring”.
Sir Michael Atiyah and Cédric Villani, Fields medallists, holders of a frankly embarrassing number of other awards, and highly entertaining speakers, will be having a conversation “to explore mathematics and topology” at Tate Modern, London, on June 2nd, following a screening of the film Au Bonheur des Maths.
Stanford University News have posted a press release/interview with Reviel Netz about his book Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic.