Too many herds
Harassing a woman, cornering her, forcing her, murdering her if she resists, is neither new nor uncommon. It has happened, it happens and, if it is not remedied, I fear it will continue to happen; […]
Month: April 2018
Human behaviour is not reducible to mathematics (by P. Griffiths)
Phillip Griffiths is a mathematician with a most brilliant career. He has been a professor at the universities of Berkeley, Princeton, Harvard and Duke, and was director of the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study […]
50 years with Kubrick’s (and Clarke’s) apes
Is there life in some other place in the universe? In some way, the Star Trek and Star Wars galactic sagas (begun in 1966 and 1977, respectively) have numbed the vertigo produced by such a […]
Robert P. Langlands: Abel Prize 2018
About the Abel Prize On 20 March 2018, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced the award of the 2018 Abel Prize to mathematician Robert P. Langlands, of the Institute for Advanced Study at […]
Forgotten formula
The workings In today’s Divertimento, a student faces a maths exam. Maths tests are often associated with a certain amount of stress and anxiety, but usually do not reach the levels that Professor Igor Tamm […]
Solution: Forgotten formula
We publish here the solution to the divertimento Forgotten formula. The fun A student taking an exam on the applications of Trigonometry is asked for the area of a trapezoid of which the two bases […]
José de Mendoza y Ríos, mathematician and spy
A few years ago the IMUS directors asked me to name the mathematical research colloquium shared by the IMUS and the IEMath-GR after an Andalusian mathematician, and I suggested José de Mendoza y Ríos (1761-1816) […]