Simple beauties of math (yes, math)
Shing-Tung Yau sees a beautiful universe around him, crafted by nature into the shapes and forms we see every day. Mathematics describes those shapes and forms, the discipline of geometry in particular. So, to Yau, it shares nature’s beauty. Yau, the Graustein Professor of Mathematics and chair of the Math Department, is trying to bring math out of the closet. Its practitioners, he said, are not strange or reclusive, as the public sometimes perceives them, but rather scientists trying to understand the orderly principles that describe the world around us. Isaac Newton, for example, made major contributions to calculus in order to describe the motions of the planets. Mathematicians draw insights from their work with numbers, shapes, and forms that can help other scientists, especially physicists, in their work. “I think people don’t understand that we are scientists and make fundamental contributions,” Yau said. “We can help physicists; we can help engineers.” Yau’s own...