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Ivars Peterson |
On Friday, April 10, 2009 at 2:00 p.m., a special invited lecture will take place in the Topping Room of the Old Chapel as part of this year’s induction ceremony of the Randolph-Macon College chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, the national mathematics honor society. Entitled “A Journey into Mathematical Art,” the lecture will be given by the nationally recognized mathematical expositor Ivars Peterson.
From Fibonacci numbers and the digits of pi to tetrahedra, fractals, and Möbius strips, mathematics has inspired a wide variety of artists. Many people are familiar with the work of M. C. Escher and aware of the intertwining of math and art during the Renaissance, but the realm of mathematical art is far wider and more diverse than most people realize. An illustrated survey of contemporary math-related art illuminates these rich interactions.
Ivars Peterson is director of publications for journals and communications at the Mathematical Association of America in Washington, D.C. For more than 25 years previously, he was a writer at Science News. He also served as editor of Science News for Kids and Science News Online and wrote the weekly online column Ivars Peterson’s MathTrek.
Ivars Peterson received his education from the University of Toronto, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree (majoring in physics and chemistry) and a Bachelor of Education degree. He taught high school science and mathematics for eight years. In 1980, he left teaching to obtain a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. He served as an intern at Science News in Washington, D.C. and then joined the weekly magazine’s staff.
Peterson’s first book, The Mathematical Tourist: Snapshots of Modern Mathematics (W.H. Freeman, 1988; rev. ed., 1998), was widely and favorably reviewed. He followed up that success with Islands of Truth: A Mathematical Mystery Cruise (W.H. Freeman, 1990), Newton’s Clock: Chaos in the Solar System (W.H. Freeman, 1993), Fatal Defect: Chasing Killer Computer Bugs (Times Books, 1995), The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (Wiley, 1998), Fragments of Infinity: A Kaleidoscope of Math and Art (Wiley, 2001), and Mathematical Treks: From Surreal Numbers to Magic Circles (Mathematical Association of America, 2002).
He has collaborated with his wife, Nancy Henderson, on two books introducing selected topics in contemporary mathematics to children of middle-school age: Math Trek: Adventures in the MathZone (Wiley, 2000) and Math Trek 2: A Mathematical Space Odyssey (Wiley, 2001). For more than 10 years, he wrote the “Math Page” column for the children’s magazine Muse.
In 1991, Ivars Peterson received the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award recognizing him for his “exceptional ability and sustained effort in communicating mathematics to a general audience.”
For more information about this event, please contact Adrian Rice at arice4@rmc.edu.