History and Culture

Mathematics to make you think: games and mental arithmetic

To celebrate Tangente's 30th anniversary, here are a few small mathematical challenges to get you thinking carefully...

Hands-on mathematics: maths at your fingertips

Mathematics can be hands-on too! Such activities will be on offer on December 3, for Tangente's 30th anniversary.

Tangente at 30: lectures on surprising mathematics

For Tangente's 30th anniversary, on Sunday, December 3, renowned experts will talk about the mathematics they love. Here are the summaries.

Tangente's 30th anniversary program | Tangente Magazine

Here is the programme (which will be updated regularly) for Tangente's 30th anniversary celebrations at the Musée des arts et métiers on Sunday, December 3, 2017. Admission is free for everyone!

Tangente Day programme: 2 December | Tangente

Here is the programme (which will be updated regularly) for Tangente Day at the Musée des Arts et Métiers on Sunday, 2 December 2018. Admission is free for everyone. Save the date!

The Ramanujan–Hardy duo on screen | Tangente Magazine

Areas and antiderivatives: a close connection

Areas and antiderivatives have been linked ever since the foundational work of Leibniz and Newton in the 17th century. This connection has simplified the calculation of the areas of many regions in the plane, but the relationship between area and the integral goes far deeper than this computational question.

No doubt about it | Tangente Magazine

We were used to highly faceted origami figures with clearly visible folds. Now a group of Austrian researchers has given these forms much smoother contours.

Malevitch: Geometry at the heart of Suprematism

A hundred years ago, the artist Kasimir Severinovitch Malevitch (1878–1935) was appointed commissioner for the preservation of buildings and the arts

Gérard Tronel: A life devoted to mathematics | Tangente

Mathematician Gérard Tronel, a great friend of the Tangente editorial team, had been battling cancer for years. He passed away on August 25.

Maryam Mirzakhani: a star has just gone out | Tangente

The brilliant Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani died of breast cancer on 15 July 2017, at the age of 40

And the angle makes history…

The so-called inscribed angle theorem, still part of every middle-school student's mathematical toolkit today, was already known to ancient geometers. It can sometimes have unusual applications.

2018 Championship

The 32nd Mathematical and Logical Games Championship, organized by the Fédération française des jeux mathématiques, is under way. Tangente brings you an exclusive look at the eighteen problems from the individual quarterfinals.

Tangente turns 30

A grand celebration awaits you on Sunday, December 3, at the Musée des arts et métiers in Paris to mark Tangente's 30th anniversary, followed by an event in Brussels on December 8 and 9. No one is left out: there will be something for everyone, whatever their age or level.

Fractals in film: from geometry to special effects

Fractal geometry was central to the earliest computer-generated imagery on the big screen. The study of self-similar forms found in nature gave rise to the first computer-generated images… and thus spawned an entire entertainment industry!

Georges Méliès: special effects, anamorphosis and maths

Georges Méliès is often described as the creator of cinematic spectacle, while the Lumière brothers are the inventors of the cinematograph. In fact, Méliès was passionate about technology. He found solutions to problems that can readily be expressed in mathematical terms.

Three camera forerunners: from Marey to the Cinematograph

The pioneers of cinematography used objects that were sometimes unusual, which you can still admire at the Musée des arts et métiers (60 rue Réaumur, 75003 Paris).

Mathematics in fiction films

The world of mathematics is sometimes represented on screen, with varying degrees of success. Films offer a jumble of simple plot devices, biopics, realistic or imagined depictions of the mathematical world, and even the scientific fiction theorized by Denis Guedj.

Mathematical calligrams | Tangente Magazine

A calligram is a poem arranged on the page to form an image, usually related to its subject. Here we present several quotations about mathematics in the form of calligrams.

Poets talk to us about math… and vice versa

Mathematics and poetry are two ways of making sense of the world. Worlds apart? Not quite.