90 min listen
The Seduction of Curves: The Lines of Beauty That Connect Mathematics, Art and The Nude - Allan McRobie
The Seduction of Curves: The Lines of Beauty That Connect Mathematics, Art and The Nude - Allan McRobie
ratings:
Length:
47 minutes
Released:
Nov 16, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Allan McRobie explains how the key to understanding the language of curves is Rene Thom’s Catastrophe Theory, and how remarkably the best place to learn that language is perhaps in the life drawing class. There is a deep connection between the stability of oil rigs, the bending of light during gravitational lensing and the act of life drawing. To understand each, we must understand how we view curved surfaces. We are familiar with the language of straight-line geometry -- of squares, rectangles, hexagons. But curves also have a language -- of folds, cusps and swallowtails that few of us know.
Sharing its title with Allan's new book, the talk will wander gently across mathematics, physics, engineering, biology and art, but always with a focus on curves.
Warning: this talk contains nudity.
Allan McRobie is Reader in Engineering, University of Cambridge
Sharing its title with Allan's new book, the talk will wander gently across mathematics, physics, engineering, biology and art, but always with a focus on curves.
Warning: this talk contains nudity.
Allan McRobie is Reader in Engineering, University of Cambridge
Released:
Nov 16, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (93)
The Irrational, the chaotic and incomplete: the mathematical limits of knowledge - Marcus du Sautoy: Professor Marcus du Sautoy (New College), Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science, author and broadcaster gives a talk about how much we can understand of the world through maths by The Secrets of Mathematics