Newton, Einstein, Gravity, Poetry

     Recent discovery of gravitational waves has put Einstein (1878-1955) -- and even Newton (1643-1727) -- into recent news, and a visit to one of my favorite reference collections, James R. Newman's four-volume collection, The World of Mathematics, finds those two giants celebrated in verse:

Introductory quotes for Section 21 ("The New Law of Gravitation and the Old Law" by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington) of Part V (on page 1073 of Volume Two) of James R. Newman's The World of Mathematics.

     Here are links to information about the poets named above:  Lord Byron (1788-1824),  Alexander Pope (1688-1744), and Sir John Collings Squire (1884-1958) -- and these links lead to previous blog postings that feature The World of Mathematics:  March 22, 2011 and August 2, 2011.

Numbers are more than numbers

Today, a poem in three parts, "Trouble with Numbers" -- from the collection Mathematics and Other Poems by William Wall. 

Poetry and Mathematics -- Similarities

HOW are mathematics and poetry similar?

Often-quoted in mathematical circles are words from mathematician Karl Weierstrass (1815-97): “It is true that a mathematician, who is not somewhat of a poet, will never be a perfect mathematician.”    And from physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955):  "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." More recently, from Lipman Bers (1914-1993): “  . . . mathematics is very much like poetry . . . what makes a good poem—a great poem—is that there is a large amount of thought expressed in very few words."

Poetry of Logical Ideas

When the NY Times failed to publish an obituary following the death of noted algebraist Amalie "Emmy" Noether, Albert Einstein corrected the omission with a letter to the editor (noting Noether's accomplishments) published on May 5, 1935. In addition to his praise for one of the most accomplished mathematicians of all time, Einstein said this of mathematics: "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." In the 1960s, as I climbed into the male-dominated world of mathematics, Emmy Noether was one of my heroes. Many years later I wrote this poem.