The marvelous storyteller behind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was also a photographer, a mathematics teacher at the University of Oxford and… an inspired logician.
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Lewis Carroll is known worldwide as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Behind the pseudonym was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), an Oxford mathematics lecturer with a passion for logic.
Although he is known for his recreational mathematics and his work as a popularizer, Martin Gardner strangely never pursued a course of study in the discipline. Here are the surprising stages of his unusual path.
When considering several subsets of the same set, it can be difficult to distinguish their various intersections. Representing these subsets as "potato-shaped blobs" often makes things clearer—and keeps us from looking like potatoes when faced with questions that are simpler than they seem.
Fifteen minutes to retrace the key moments in a mathematician's career: that was the challenge set—twice during the day—for the outstanding speakers in the conference room at Tangente's 30th-anniversary celebration (times in parentheses).
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