Latest news from Plus magazine! - http://plus.maths.org


In this newsletter:

- Latest news
- Browse with Plus
- Mathematical moments
- Live maths
- The Plus new writers award

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Latest news

Troubled minds and perfect turbulence - Mathematicians investigate Van 
Gogh's most captivating paintings 
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/may-aug06/vangogh/index.html

Flyby asteroid - A visitor from outer space that came too close for comfort
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/may-aug06/asteroid/index.html

Teaching excellence - The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of 
Mathematics has just been launched 
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/may-aug06/ncem/index.html

Plus ... more news from the world of maths

Eliminating the photographer
http://www.plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr05/plusmore35/index.html#imaging

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Browse with Plus

Fermat's last theorem

In our last newsletter we celebrated the anniversary of Andrew Wiles's 
proof of Fermat's last theorem. The theorem, so easy to state but 
devilishly hard to prove, had been around for over 300 years before Wiles 
finally managed to pin it down. If this has got you curious, then have a 
look at this blog on Fermat's last theorem which aims to present the story 
behind it in a way accessible to non-experts.

http://fermatslasttheorem.blogspot.com/

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Mathematical moments

Jules Henri Poincare - born 29th of April 1854 in Nancy,  France
                       died 17th of July 1912 in Paris, France

Poincare has been hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of all time and 
one of the last people whose understanding of maths was truly universal. 
Having been described as a "monster of maths" by one of his teachers, he 
soon went on to make major contributions to an amazingly wide range of 
subjects including maths, celestial mechanics, fluid mechanics, the theory 
of relativity and the philosophy of science, to name but a few.

Although, or maybe because, Poincare had been suffering from poor eyesight 
since childhood, he developed immense powers of visualisation, which must 
have helped him particularly in his work on geometry and topology. Together 
with Felix Klein he worked on functions today known as Moebius 
transformations, which are intimately connected to hyperbolic geometry, and 
today his name remains attached to a model of hyperbolic space. Poincare 
also laid the foundations of "homotopy theory", which tries to describe 
topological surfaces by algebraic constructs, such as groups. One of the 
questions arising from this work, the Poincare conjecture, remained 
unsolved until 2003, when the mathematician Grigori Perelman announced a 
proof.

But even Poincare wasn't perfect. In 1887, he submitted a paper on the 
dynamics of celestial bodies to a maths competition. It won the prize but 
was later found to contain an error. This error, and the new insights that 
arose from attempts to fix it, is today regarded as the birth of chaos 
theory.

Not content with just doing the maths, Poincare also thought about how it's 
done and the philosophy behind it. He held that intuition had an important 
role to play in maths, and anticipated the work of Kurt Goedel, who proved 
that maths cannot ever be completely formalised.

Finally, and extremely pleasingly for us here at Plus, Poincare was one of 
the few scientists of his time to share his knowledge by writing numerous 
popular science articles.
 
To find out more read Poincare's biography on the MacTutor history of maths 
site: http://www-circa.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Poincare.html

and on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/poincare.htm

Find out more about aspects of Poincare's work with these Plus articles:

Hyperbolic geometry: http://plus.maths.org/issue18/xfile/index.html

Topology: http://plus.maths.org/issue10/features/topology/

The Poincare conjecture: 
http://plus.maths.org/issue25/news/poincare/index.html
http://plus.maths.org/issue20/news/prize/index.html

Chaos in nature: http://plus.maths.org/issue26/features/budd/index.html
                 http://plus.maths.org/issue36/features/dartnell/index.html
                 http://plus.maths.org/issue35/features/dartnell/index.html
                    
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Live maths

Marcus du Sautoy will present a four part series on maths on Teachers' TV. 
The 15 minute episodes will run in September and October this year and can 
be downloaded from the teacher's TV website: 
http://www.teachers.tv/subjectBlockProgramme.do?zoneId=2&transmissionProgrammeId=382628 
http://www.teachers.tv/subjectBlockProgramme.do?zoneId=2&transmissionProgrammeId=382625 
http://www.teachers.tv/subjectBlockProgramme.do?zoneId=2&transmissionProgrammeId=382626 
http://www.teachers.tv/subjectBlockProgramme.do?zoneId=2&transmissionProgrammeId=382613



Bridges - family day 

The Royal Institution has joined forces with the Bridges conference on 
mathematical connections in art, music, and science to put on an art and 
maths family day. During the morning four of the RI's popular Masterclasses 
will take place, exploring the maths behind anamorphic art, juggling, 
perspective, and Celtic and African Art. A maths fair presenting a range of 
activities that relate to mathematics, art and music will take place during 
the afternoon.

All tickets are free, but you do need to book for the Masterclasses. 
Tickets are available on the RI website: 
http://www.rigb.org/rimain/calendar/detail.jsp?&id=280

When: Wednesday, 9th of August 2006, all day
Where: Jeffrey Hall, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL
Info and tickets: http://www.rigb.org/rimain/calendar/detail.jsp?&id=280


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The Plus new writers award - maths is the language of the universe, so what 
have you got to say?

The Plus new writers award is still open for entries. Try your hand at 
being a Plus author, and you could get published in the December issue and 
even win an iPod. Competition closes September 30th 2006, for more details 
visit http://plus.maths.org/competition.

Happy reading from the Plus team!

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