Bridges 2025 Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design

Sarah Glaz, Mark Sanders

Artists

Sarah Glaz

Emeritus Professor of Mathematics

Department of Mathematics, The University of Connecticut

Storrs, Connecticut, USA

sarah.glaz@uconn.edu

https://www2.math.uconn.edu/~glaz/

Statement

The poet, Sarah Glaz, resides in the US. She is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Connecticut specializing in the area of commutative algebra. Her poetry is often inspired by mathematics and its history. Mark Sanders, from Northamptonshire, UK, is a collage and ceramic artist whose work engages with surrealism. His collage construction is driven by research and combines materials already in his stockpile with new components as required by the subject. This piece is part of their larger joint poem-collage project involving the ancient history of mathematics.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Who are you Diophantus?'

Who are you Diophantus?

21.7 x 37.0 cm

Digital print, collage materials, paper, ink

2024

Additional info

Diophantus (200-284 CE), a Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, is considered the “Father of Algebra.” His treatise Arithmetica, innovative in both subject matter and approach to problems, paved the way to the development of symbolic algebra, and to the advancement of number theory. Arithmetica’s Book II.8, cited in the poem, inspired the famous conjecture called, Fermat’s Last Theorem, which took over 300 years to solve. Almost nothing is known about Diophantus as an individual. The mystery surrounding his person expressed in the poem, is reflected in the collage by casting Diophantus as the masked figure descending to earth on the wings of the Sumatran Swallowtail butterfly, Papilio Diophantus. More information at the link.