Re: [HM] Mathematics as Theater

Subject: Re: [HM] Mathematics as Theater
From: Antreas P. Hatzipolakis (xpolakis@otenet.gr)
Date: Sun Apr 30 2000 - 19:01:50 EDT

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[Alfred Ross]:
>> It would be fine, I think, if we list some topics from
>> the history of mathematics that would be appropriate to
>> be read or played like theater.

[John Harper]:
> Life of Kovalevskaya (or however you want to spell her name)

There is already a movie on her life. Following is an excerpt from
The Math in the Movies Page located at:

http://world.std.com/~reinhold/mathmovies.html

<quote>
A Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon (1983)
( Berget paa maanens baksida (1983))

Roger Cooke asks "how in the world did you overlook [this] story of Sonya
Kovalevskaya's stay in Sweden--advertised as the feminist movie of the
1980's. Actually, as a female colleague said to me after seeing it, 'That
movie says that to be a female mathematician you have to be ugly,
neurotic, and a bad mother.' Since I have spent considerable time
researching and writing about Kovalevskaya, I concur. Mathematically they
missed the point entirely about Kovalevskaya. On the plus side, where else
would you see actors portraying Weierstrass and Mittag-Leffler?"

"On the personal side, they also got it wrong. I remember thinking Meg Ryan
was hardly the ideal actress to play Einstein's brilliant niece in IQ, but
she'd have been about right physically (with her hair dyed brown) to play
Kovalevskaya. Instead they got an extremely homely Swedish actress to
play the part, and they made her a temperamental prima donna at her first
lecture in Stockholm. Actually, she was diffident to the extreme, and
always afraid she wasn't doing a good enough job. As for my colleague's
comments, well, Kovalevskaya was neurotic and a bad mother, but she
wasn't ugly. A century after her death, though, she still leaves a legacy of
two very brilliant mathematical results."

" P.S. There is a mountain on the far side of the moon that the Soviets
named after Kovalevskaya (their robot space ship [Luna 3] was the first to
photograph the far side of the moon). I presume that's the reason for the
title, though no reference is made to it in the movie, either at the
beginning or the end.
</quote>

And an Italian movie on Renato Caccioppoli:
<quote>
In 1992, a film Morte di un matematica napoletono ("Death of a Naples
mathematician") was made by the Italian Director Mario Martone about the
events leading to Caccioppoli's suicide.
</quote>
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Caccioppoli.html