Tag: mathematics

Conan Chadbourne

Digital Mathematical Images by Conan Chadbourne

Born in 1978, Conan Chadbourne received his BA in Mathematics and Physics from New York University in 2011. He has worked in the fields of experimental physics research, digital imaging and printing, graphic design, and documentary film production.. Chadbourne lives in San Antonio where he works as a freelance graphic designer and documentary film producer.

Chadbourne  draws inspiration for his work from his experience in mathematics and the sciences. He is motivated by his fascination with the occurrence of mathematical and scientific imagery in traditional art forms, and the mystical, spiritual, or cosmological significance that is often attached to such imagery. 

Mathematical themes both overt and subtle appear in a broad range of traditional art: Medieval illuminated manuscripts, Buddhist mandalas, intricate tilings in Islamic architecture, restrained temple geometry paintings in Japan, complex patterns in African textiles, and geometric ornament in archaic Greek ceramics. Often this imagery is deeply connected with the models and abstractions these cultures use to interpret and relate to the cosmos, in much the same way that modern scientific diagrams express a scientific worldview.

Conan Chadbourn’s works have been exhibited at the Grace Museum in Abilene, Texas; The Art Center of Corpus Christi,;the Museum of Geometric and MADI Art in Dallas, Texas; and the Bridges Conference for Mathematics in the Arts.

“There are 212,987 distinct ways to partition a 4×4 grid of square tiles into component shapes composed of contiguous tiles, assuming any two such partitions are considered equivalent if they differ only by a symmetry transformation such as a rotation or reflection. There are exactly thirteen of these configurations which partition this grid of sixteen tiles into two component shapes of equal area, each composed of eight tiles. This image presents this set of thirteen equal divisions of this group of tiles.”

—Conan Chadbourne, Discussing his image “Concise Lesson in Uniform Partitions”

Calendar: March 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of March

Midnight Vignette

On March 30, 1796, German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss discovers the construction of the heptadecagon. 

Carl Friedrich Gauss, the only child of poor parents, was rare among mathematicians in that he was a calculating prodigy, who retained the ability to  do elaborate calculations in his head through most of his life. He was recommended by his teachers to the Duke of Brunswick in 1791 who enabled him financially to attend local schools and later to study mathematics at the University of Gottingen, Germany. 

Due to his pioneering work, Gauss became the era’s preeminent mathematician, first in the German-speaking world and later became regarded as one of the greatest of all time. Gauss made many contributions to the fields of number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary astronomy, the theory of functions and the theory of electromagnetism. 

As the number seventeen is a Fermat prime, the regular heptadecagon is a constructible polygon, that is, one that can be constructed by using a compass and an unmarked straightedge. Carl Friedrich Gauss showed this in 1796 at the age of nineteen. The significance of this lies not in the result but in the proof, which rested on the analysis of the factorization of polynomial equations. This proof represented the first progress in regular polygon construction in over two thousand years.

After Gauss’s death in 1855, the discovery of so many novel ideas among his unpublished papers extended his influence well into the remainder of the century. Acceptance of non-Euclidean geometry came with the almost simultaneous publication of Riemann’s general ideas about geometry, the Italian Eugenio Beltrami’s explicit and rigorous account of non-Euclidean geometry, and Gauss’s private notes and correspondence.