Personal perspectives

Mathematics in art

M.C. Escher's "Print Gallery": Why is there a blurry white blob in the centre of this lithograph which appears to have been etched from a strangely distorted perspective?

Dr. Hendrik Lenstra, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, explained the artistic puzzle mathematically. He discovered that Escher's distortion used principles of conformal maps. He further developed a formula utilizing the theory of elliptic curves, which, when embedded into a computer program, was able to generate a very close approximation of Escher's original artwork.

The midas touch in nature, art, architecture and engineering

A thing of golden beauty in the minds of the Ancient Greek mathematicians was an irrational number constant which had an infinite number of decimal places When its ratios were found in many forms in nature and in the growth of both plants and animals, it became a cultural form of design in art, architectural forms, engineering structures and the layout of public gardens.

What is the Golden Ratio? (Published on July 10, 2020 by Interesting Engineering)