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Escher and Elliptic Curves

Posted by michael on from the fill-in-the-blanks dept.

melquiades writes "Mathematician Hendrik Lenstra was struck by the blank spot in M. C. Escher's Print Gallery . Why is the spot blank there, he wondered, and what should go in it? Although Escher, who had only a high-school mathematics background, drew the picture by brilliant and methodical intuition, the mathematical machinery underlying the image turned out to be elliptic curves (which come up in factorization, cryptography, and the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem). Lenstra and his colleagues were able to generate several breathtaking possible completions for the missing space. Read the story at the ever-registration-required NYT."

1 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. absurd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is perhaps one of my favorite drawings by esher and has been so for many years. Oddly enough, when I first saw the picture I was sorely pissed off because the picture didn't seem complete. What the hell was in that spot? I wanted to know badly and I couldn't possibly like the drawing until I did.

    It was only when I came back to the picture years later. I tried to figure out what I would put in the spot that I realized how excellent the drawing is. It is a stunning metamorphosis between images and I believe the spot only serves to compound that perfectly. If the spot was there you would spend more time staring at the spot them following the transforming images around the outside. The subtly of the picture would be lost on people who were fascinated by the damn spot in the middle (as it was with me).

    I'm not denouncing their work. It is very impressive and interesting to read. However I have no intentions of ever hanging a print up without that damn spot. (insert appropriate Shakespeare joke here)