A photographic exploration of mathematicians' chalkboards
A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns, wrote the British mathematician G. H. Hardy. In Do Not Erase, photographer Jessica Wynne presents remarkable examples of this idea through images of mathematicians' chalkboards. While other fields have replaced chalkboards with whiteboards and digital presentations, mathematicians remain loyal to chalk for puzzling out their ideas and communicating their research. Wynne offers more than one hundred stunning photographs of these chalkboards, gathered from a diverse group of mathematicians around the world. The photographs are accompanied by essays from each mathematician, reflecting on their work and processes. Together, pictures and words provide an illuminating meditation on the unique relationships among mathematics, art, and creativity.
The mathematicians featured in this collection comprise exciting new voices alongside established figures, including Sun-Yung Alice Chang, Alain Connes, Misha Gromov, Andre Neves, Kasso Okoudjou, Peter Shor, Christina Sormani, Terence Tao, Claire Voisin, and many others. The companion essays give insights into how the chalkboard serves as a special medium for mathematical expression. The volume also includes an introduction by the author, an afterword by New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson, and biographical information for each contributor.
Do Not Erase is a testament to the myriad ways that mathematicians use their chalkboards to reveal the conceptual and visual beauty of their discipline-shapes, figures, formulas, and conjectures created through imagination, argument, and speculation.
Title: Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards
Author: Wynne, Jessica
ISBN: 9780691199221
Binding:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 2021-06-22
Number of Pages: 240
Weight: 1.3404 kg
Winner of the PROSE Award in Popular Science and Mathematics, Association of American Publishers
Do Not Erase . . . reveals the scribbles, workings and eureka moments of minds bursting with equations and theories, a paean to mental graft and the blackboards that display it. You can almost feel the tickle of dust in the nose, the thump of chalk on the board, the swish of a cuff brushing away a mistake. ---Nicola Davis, The Observer
American photographer Jessica Wynne's Do Not Erase captures the visual workings of mathematicians in producing formulas and illustrating their thoughts. ---Cheyenne Darko, The Financial Times Snapshot
This is an original, elegant, if baffling book. ---Andrew Robinson, Nature
[Wynne] forces us to look at the chalkboards themselves, to see them as documents or artifacts, without the irresistible distraction of human presence. ---Brian Hayes, American Scientist
This is a wonderful mirror that Jessica Wynne shows us mathematicians of a world that is so very familiar when looking at it from the inside of our world of mathematics. . . . [that also] forces us to think in a different way about what we are doing day in and day out. ---Adhemar Bultheel, MAA Reviews
An incredible, intense delight to read and study . . . Do Not Erase has become my favorite book to randomly explore. ---Edward J. Valauskas, First Monday
[A] testament to the myriad ways that mathematicians use their chalkboards to reveal the conceptual and visual beauty of their discipline-shapes, figures, formulas, and conjectures created through imagination, argument, and speculation. * MathSciNet *