Popular mathematics

Popular mathematics is the presentation of mathematics to an aimed general audience.

The difference between recreational mathematics and popular mathematics is that recreational mathematics intends to be fun for the mathematical community, and popular mathematics intends to make mathematical knowledge known by the general audience.

Some popularization methods are mathematical books which require no mathematical background, and in other cases involves social interaction to raise awareness.

There are several reasons to popularize mathematics or promote mathematics, but it is indeed the most difficult academic discipline to popularize.

History

Research by historians of mathematics has shown the existence of a tradition of popularization dating back at least to the Middle Ages, and we can even consider ''The Sand Reckoner'', in the 3rd century BC, as the first example of a mathematical text intended for a non-mathematician.

The popularization of science has accompanied the progress of science at least since the 17th century, with Galileo's famous text, ''The Assayer'' or for example works such as the ''Conférences sur la plurality des mondes'' of Fontenelle or ''Letters to a German Princess'' of Leonhard Euler, popular mathematical texts are also quite common, thus the Encyclopedia is a vast undertaking of popularization in all kinds of fields and the very numerous Mathematics articles that we owe to D'Alembert are, as far as this disciplinary field is concerned, an obvious illustration.

Alongside this, we must mention several important texts of the 18th century, the translation of the '' Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' by Émilie du Châtelet which makes it possible to make Isaac Newton's work available to French-speaking scientists and the ''Eulogy of Euler'' by Marquis de Condorcet which makes known the production of this great mathematician or the one, by Fontenelle, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. On the other hand, the '' Journal des sçavans'' serves as a support for the popularization of science, particularly mathematics, by announcing recent discoveries and by presenting recent books and works aimed at a wide audience. Alongside this, there are books on recreational mathematics for didactic purposes, such as the books by Bachet de Méziriac, Claude Mydorge, Jacques Ozanam and Édouard Lucas, the eulogies of mathematicians on their death or their jubilee pronounced by one of their collaborators and intended to present their work to their non-mathematician colleagues and friends, and the numerous forms contenting themselves with giving results without demonstration, or having for purpose of teaching calculation techniques.

With a more immediately practical objective, the progressive mathematization of physics from the work of Newton frequently leads mathematicians to produce popular texts for the use of other scientists and even beyond; we can particularly cite the publications of Joseph Bertrand in the 19th century, Antoine Cournot tries, meanwhile, to popularize mathematics in the direction of economists.

We begin, at the beginning of the 20th century, to find more and more texts addressed to non-specialists, for example by Russell, Poincaré or Borel, and texts really intended for the general public and seeking to communicate the essence of what is the work of the mathematician are, in 1940, A Mathematician's Apology by G. H. Hardy, the following year the book by Richard Courant, '' What Is Mathematics?'' and in 1945 George Pólya 's book How To Solve It.

Beginning in 1956, Martin Gardner's regular math games column in ''Scientific American'' pioneered a more mainstream approach to mathematical topics; other similar chronicles appear in numerous popular journals, for example that of Jean-Paul Delahaye in ''Pour la science''.

Christopher Zeeman was the first mathematician to deliver a lecture at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 1978. Hannah Fry was the second in 2019.

Reasons

There are several reasons to popularize mathematics.

The first is to increase the number minorities in mathematics.

Mathematical communication is an important tool that allows children to demonstrate their mathematical thinking and understanding of the world, and has become ever important in a world with increasing amounts of math anxiety.

Sometimes students use semi-proudlythe sentence “not being good at math,” while being ashamed of saying they don't understand Picasso, as Marcelo Viana, mathematician, said.

A significant difficulty in popularizing mathematics is the abstract nature of many concepts, and therefore the virtual impossibility of illustrating them. From the 1980s, with the appearance of powerful graphic tools revolutionized certain sectors of mathematics education and their popularization. In 1986, a traveling exhibition by Heinz-Otto Peitgen, ''Frontiers of Chaos'', introduced the general public to the beauty of fractal images''.'' In 2005, Erica N. Walker said in an interview with Columbia University that she was a mathematical activist.

Methods

Popularizers of mathematics follow some methods to popularize mathematics.

The creation of resources such as books which includes mathematical literature, museums, magazines, which can be enjoyed by the public, and which vary according to the historical moment, especially to approach fashions, cultures and to have a greater impact and scope. Education can play a fundamental role in the development of mathematical culture. YouTube channels about mathematics started, such as Numberphile, 3Blue1Brown, and are viewed by many people. Several museums aim at enhancing public understanding of mathematics, like Museum of Mathematics in New York City, and its predecessor, the Goudreau Museum of Mathematics in Art and Science, the Haus der Mathematik in Vienna, the Arithmeum in Bonn, the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden, the Mathematikum in Giessen, the Experiminta in Frankfurt, the Virtuelles Freiberger Museum für Mathematik und Kunst in Freiberg, or the Garden of Archimedes in Firenze, or the Museu de Matemàtiques de Catalunya in Cornellà de Llobregat. Plus Magazine is a free online magazine run under the Millennium Mathematics Project at the University of Cambridge. In 2012, the appearance of '' Quanta Magazine'' contributed to mathematical journalism. Several novels, films and books are centered on mathematical subjects and also aim to popularize them, like mathematical fiction. Arguably the first of these is ''Flatland'', an 1884 novel intended to introduce the reader to the then-recent concepts of the geometry of four-dimensional space; subsequently, authors like Denis Guedj or Apóstolos Doxiádis build some of their plots around Fermat's last theorem or Goldbach's conjecture. Simon Singh wrote Fermat's Last Theorem book, Charles Seife wrote Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Rózsa Péter wrote Playing with Infinity.

In 2008, the London Mathematical Society and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications created the Christopher Zeeman Medal to recognise and acknowledge the contributions of mathematicians involved in promoting mathematics to the public.{{Cite web , title=News from the world of maths: Christopher Zeeman Medal for Maths Communication , url=https://plus.maths.org/content/news-world-maths-christopher-zeeman-medal-maths-communication , access-date=2022-12-18 , website=Plus Maths , language=en In 2010, the International Mathematical Union created the Leelavati Award for outstanding contribution to public outreach in mathematics.

References

Mathematics and culture
Mathematics literature
Recreational mathematics
Mathematics