Anne Burns

Professor Emerita
Mathematics Department, Long Island University
Brookville, NY 11548

For many years I have been fascinated by the connections between art and mathematics. I began college as an art major, but then discovered that I loved mathematics and went on to a career as a mathematics professor. When I bought my first computer in the 1980's I discovered that computer graphics allowed me to combine my interests..

Gray Julia
Gray Julia
12 inches by 12 inches
Digital print
2013

"Gray Julia" is the Julia Set of a rational function that has a pole of order 3 at the origin. The white regions are 'pre-poles'; that is, a point is colored white if its orbit enters the "trap door" surrounding the pole. A point is colored black if its orbit remains bounded. All points except the black points have an orbit that eventually escapes. The number of iterations,it takes for the orbit to escape determines the color.