Headline, June 04 2022/ ''' '' UPON* PRIME ULTRA '' '''

 

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GREAT LITERATURE AND GREAT MATHEMATICS satisfy the same deep yearning in us : for beauty, for truth, for understanding. As the pioneering Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya wrote :

'' It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul...... the poet must see what others do not see, must see more deeply [.......]. And the mathematician must do the same.

THE MATHEMATICIAN G.H.HARDY WROTE that '' a mathematician - like a painter or a poet - is a maker of patterns. And that brings us to the wondrous connections between mathematics and literature.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test : There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.''

THAT FEELING WE GET WHEN WE READ a great novel or a perfect sonnet - that here is a beautiful thing - with all the component parts fitting together perfectly in a harmonious whole is the same  feeling a mathematician experiences when reading a beautiful proof.

That fitting together, that structure, is probably most visible in poetry, but all writing has structure. Letters form words, words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs.

Just like the point, line, plane hierarchy of geometry, constraints or rules can be imposed at any stage - it's not whether to have a structure, it's what structure to choose.

The French author Georges Perec wrote a novel [ '' La Disparition. '' or '' A Void '' in the English translation ] without once using the letter E. Eleanor

Catton's Booker - Prize-winning '' The Luminaries '' imposes a precis numerical rule on its chapters, each of which is half the length of the last.

In both cases, the mathematical constraint echoes and enforces the novel's themes. The constraints we choose inspire us to create, to see what is possible -and it's just the same in math.

It's worth pointing out as well that links between mathematics and literature do not run in just one direction. Mathematics itself has a rich heritage of linguistic creativity.

Going back to early India, Sanskrit mathematics followed an oral tradition. Mathematical algorithms were encoded in poetry so that they could be passed on by word of mouth.

We think of mathematical concepts as relating to precise, fixed words : square, circle. But in the Sanskrit tradition, your words must fit into the meter of your poem. Number words, for example, can be replaced with words for relevant objects.

The number one can be represented by anything that is unique, like the moon or the earth, while ''hand'' can mean two, because we have two hands - but so can ''black and white,'' because that forms a pair.

An expression like ''three voids teeth'' doesn't mean a visit to the dentist, but that three zeros should follow the number of teeth we have : a poetic way to say 32,000. The huge array of different words and meanings lends a compelling richness to the mathematics.

Just as mathematics makes use of literary metaphors, literature abounds with ideas that a mathematically attuned eye can detect and explore. This adds an extra dimension to our appreciation of work of fiction.

Melville's cycloids, for example, is a curious curve with many wonderful properties, but unlike curves such as the parabola and ellipse, you probably haven't heard of it unless you are a mathematician.

THAT'S a real shame, because the properties of this curve are so beautiful that it was nicknamed ''the Helen of geometry.'' Making a cycloid is quite easy. Imagine a wheel rolling along a flat road. Now mark a point on the rim somehow, say, with a blob of paint.

That blob will trace out a path in space as the wheel rolls, and this path is called a cycloid.

This is a fairly natural idea, but we don't have evidence of its being studied until the 16th century, and things don't really heat up until the 17th century and 18th centuries, when it seemed that everyone who was interested in mathematics has something to say.

It was Galileo, for example, who came up with the name ''cycloid'' : He wrote that he had worked on cycloids for 50 years.

So the fact that the cycloid gets a mention not just in ''Moby-Dick'' but in two great works of 18th-century literature, '' Gulliver's Travels '' and '' Tristram Shandy, again shows us mathematics in its rightful place -not ''other'' but part of intellectual life.

By seeing mathematics and literature as part of the same quest - to understand the world and our place in it - we can add to our experience of both, and bring whole new layers of enjoyment to our favorite writing.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Literature and Mathematics and Great Writings, continues. The World Students Society thanks Sarah Hart, a British mathematician.

With most respectful dedication to the Scientists, Mathematicians, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society -for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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