the space between | From Russia with love, math and spirituality
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/71626/the-space-between-from-russia-with-love-math-and-spirituality/
the space between | From Russia with love, math and spirituality
by dan schifrin
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Its not often that a mathematician finds himself on The Colbert Report. But a few weeks ago U.C. Berkeley professor Edward Frenkel, author of the new book Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality, explained to talk show host Stephen Colbert that for people like him mathematics is a love affair, with his lover being the beauty and truth of numbers.
I hate math! Colbert said.
Thats my fault, responded Frenkel, 45, a household name in math departments for his work on such obscure concepts as Kac-Moody algebra and the Feigin-Frenkel isomorphism. He said that many teachers have explained mathematics as if it were a necessary but unpleasant task, like painting a fence, as opposed to offering skills to both create and appreciate a van Gogh.
To underscore his view of math as both art and romance, Frenkel showed Colbert a short scene from his 2010 erotic art film, Rites of Love and Math, in which he starred and directed.
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But his book, as he explained in an interview near his Berkeley home, is not only about alerting people to the practical value of math. Math is, for him, a narrative of human endeavor that shares much with art, music and religion.
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Very interesting article, this sounds like a really good book.