Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Pure Math, Pure Joy

Posted by michael on from the msri-loves-company dept.

e271828 writes "The New York Times is carrying a nice little piece entitled Pure Math, Pure Joy about the beauty and applicability of pure math as carried out at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. There is an accompanying slideshow of pictures of mathematicians in action; I particularly loved the picture titled Waging Mental Battle with a Proof."

2 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. misery loves company by chloroquine · · Score: 3, Informative
    So, I just wanted to poke my head in here and note that MSRI (where the pictures are taken) is pronounced "misery" by the maths community.

    My (insert close relative here) does minimal surfaces and hangs out with some of these guys. They look far too neatly dressed in the pictures. Anyway, for a good time, you might want to take a look at some of the galleries of images that these crazy minimal surfaces guys do. I remember about ten years ago, one of my (insert close relative)'s colleagues sold a few images to the Grateful Dead for their concerts.

    http://www.msri.org/publications/sgp/jim/images/
    http://www.gang.umass.edu/
    There is another site out at Minnesota but I'm too lazy to look for it today.

  2. Funny... by biostatman · · Score: 3, Informative

    The title of the article is "Pure Math, Pure Joy" and it's about MSRI. While it is a phenomenal place, it is no picnic for young mathematicians for sure and is often referred to as "misery", as in "yeah, I spent a year in misery (MSRI)".

    --
    For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!