Capturing the Unicorn
I remember reading a 1992 article in The New Yorker magazine about two remarkable mathematicians, Gregory and David Chudnovsky. (For an article to stick with me that long, it must have been fascinating!)
The article, “The Mountains of Pi,” by Richard Preston, described how the brothers were working to compute the value of pi to beyond 2,000,000,000 places. Pi (π) is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It starts 3.14159… and it goes on indefinitely. It is one of the most mysterious numbers in mathematics. The Chudnovsky brothers were doing this mind-boggling calculaton on their own, homemade supercomputer, which they had built from mail-order parts! You can find the article online in The New Yorker Archives
The Chudnovsky brothers are back in the April 11, 2005 issue of The New Yorker in another article by Mr. Preston, titled “Capturing the Unicorn: How two mathematicians came to the aid of the Met.” The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has a branch, The Cloisters, which houses a variety of medieval treasures, including a series of seven tapestries called “The Hunt of the Unicorn.” Preston says they are “considered by many to be the most beautiful tapestries in existence.” These priceless works of art were taken down to be repaired and cleaned. As part of an ongoing project, they were digitally photographed. The images that resulted weren’t exactly the snapshots you or I might make: It took at least one hundred billion numbers to store the images. I don’t want to spoil the story by telling you much about what happened next, except to say that the mathematical problem that resulted when the Museum tried to build a single composite image needed the Chudnovsky brothers and their computer to solve it. You can find the article on your local newsstand right now, or at The New Yorker Printables.
Well, this is turning into a shaggy dog story, where the tail wags the dog. There was a single sentence in the article which was such a perfect reflection of one of my main points in Grow With the Flow that I wanted to pass it along to you:
Mathematicians, when they work, engage in intensely serious play.
So, when Andy says “Your mind is a playground,” it isn’t just for kids. It’s a way of life, a pattern of work, that is central to the creativity and accomplishments of some of our best minds.
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Physicists also play seriously when they sit down to their work. One of the professors in the Yale physics department says that when he was young, he told his father that he was going to grow up and be a physicist; his father replied “I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.” There is a deep truth in this–physics is an essentially playful field, and the best work emerges from a child-like sense of wonder, which leads one to pursue curiosities and follow any lead which looks like it might be fun.
This last week, I heard a lecture series by the cosmologist Alan Guth, who is the father of inflationary cosmology. Inflation is the presently accepted paradigm for the formation of the universe and has solved many problems over the last 30 years. It predicted phenomena many years ago which seemed inconceivable at the time but have recenly been verified by experiment. Guth is a first-rate scientist, and he is also lively, witty, and most certainly has a sense of humor. Aside from the pleasure of hearing about a major theory from its originator, the talks were as entertaining as they were educational, and made it clear what a joy it was for him to play with physics. The title of his last talk was “Cosmic Strings and Time Machines, a Playground for Theoretical Physicists.” He began the talk by telling us that the playground was actually open to everyone–even if theoretical physicists are most likely to inhabit it, everyone is welcome.
“Inflation is the presently accepted paradigm for the formation of the universe..”
Well, not necessarily for everyone. Some highly intelligent people are actually Creationists…