Subject: Re: [HM] Poetry and Mathematics
From: Reuben Hersh (rhersh@math.math.unm.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 31 1999 - 15:27:38 EST
about math and poetry--
J J Sylvester was famous/notorious as a prolific versifier, sometimes
including poetry within mathematical utterances. He even wrote a book
on versification (which I have not seen.)
I have seen several times an elegant versification by some Englishman
of a theorem on tangent ("kissing") circles.
Of course there's Omar Khayyam.
I must mention, even though it's not by a mathematician, the wonderful
"Definition of Love" by Andrew Marvell. The principal conceit is the
projection of a sphere onto a plane.
Here's the next to last stanza:
"As lines, so loves, oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel
Though infinite, can never meet."
Reuben Hersh
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