ELISABETH BUSSER
226 articles published in Tangente
Math for everyoneNov 26, 2019Michel Serres:
Did Michel Serres, who moved from mathematics to philosophy, truly leave the "queen of the sciences" behind? Throughout his career, at any rate, he never missed an opportunity to refer to the subject. Explore the mathematical landscape of this unconventional philosopher.
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Math for everyoneNov 21, 2019Finding divisors... without dividing
Telling almost at a glance whether one integer is divisible by another can sometimes be quite a challenge. Yet there are perfectly reliable ways to do so, even with fairly large numbers!
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Math for everyoneN°72Oct 09, 2019Thrifty bees
Optimize, optimize! That seems to be the bees' motto when they build their honeycombs. Let's take a closer look at their thrifty "methods." Geometry will prove invaluable in calculating the areas and angles of the cells.
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Math for everyoneN°72Oct 09, 2019Brachistochrone:
Is the shortest path always the fastest? Mathematicians have known since the 17th century that it is not. Skateboarders, too, have learned this through experience, ever since the profiles of their half-pipes began to follow the shape of a "brachistochrone" curve.
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Sep 19, 2019Beneath the paving stones… maths
Counting, measuring and building: these were the mathematical aims of the ancients. To achieve them, they created instruments that archaeologists have since unearthed.
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History and CultureSep 19, 2019Beneath the paving stones… mathematics
Counting, measuring and building: these were the mathematical aims of the Ancients. To achieve them, they created instruments that archaeologists have since unearthed.
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History and CultureSep 18, 2019Alexandre Grothendieck: an extreme mathematician
Barely opened to the public, Alexandre Grothendieck's archives offer a glimpse into the career and extraordinary discoveries of one of mathematics' last great geniuses. An enormous task awaits specialists in algebraic geometry and historians of mathematics!
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Reading noteSep 18, 2019Alexandre Grothendieck, mathematician of extremes
Newly opened to the public, Alexandre Grothendieck's archives evoke the career and extraordinary discoveries of one of mathematics' last great geniuses. An enormous task awaits specialists in algebraic geometry and historians of mathematics!
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Math for everyoneN°189Jul 16, 2019Arik Levy's "Rocks"
"I was more interested in the possibilities for reflections that the work offered than in the work itself: each work offers views that would be impossible without it."
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History and CultureN°189Jul 16, 2019Two theorems for the price of one
The idea of pairing two mathematical objects according to a set of rules allows us to extend certain results without reinventing everything: that is the whole point of duality. Or, mathematically speaking, how to kill two birds with one stone.
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History and CultureN°189Jul 16, 2019The Grothendieck archives: an enigmatic treasure
One hundred thousand pages of archives is no small matter! That is the scale of the legacy left by Alexandre Grothendieck, who withdrew from the world in 1991 to live in a remote village in Ariège, where he died in 2014.
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Math for everyoneN°71Jul 11, 2019Hilbert, the twenty-three problems and physics
In his plenary address at the second International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900, David Hilbert presented the world with his famous "twenty-three problems." Some relate directly to physics; others have driven advances in both physics and mathematics.
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