Recovering from an illness, I sat in my hospital bed reading Edward Frenkel’s book “Love and Math.” I was following along, scrawling equations on scratch paper when my doctor walked in and gazed at my work. “Looks interesting,” he said cheerfully. But when he came closer, he grimaced. “Oh, yuck, it’s math,” he said. “Never was any good at math. I hate it!” Then his smile reappeared. “How’s your bowel?” he asked. I couldn’t help thinking that our little exchange illustrated the difficulty of the challenge Frenkel, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, sets for himself. He seeks to “unlock the power and beauty of mathematics” for the general public, many of whom, like my doctor, view the subject as less appealing than an intestinal blockage. Frenkel believes math deserves to be an integral part of our culture. Why is everyone talking about planets, atoms and DNA and not symmetry groups? For one thing, you can’t get cancer from a mutation of a symmetry group. But Frenkel writes that math “directs the flow of the universe.” It’s as elegant as music and as much a part of our intellectual heritage as literature. He strives to awaken our wonder by taking us on an equation-packed tour of his research, in which he reveals a “hidden” world few of us encountered in school.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 03:14:21 +0000
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