Mathematics under the Microscope

A strange story of David Massey, Professor of Mathematics at Northeastern University, USA, suspended for reasons that have not been disclosed. His case as explained at http://supportmassey.com/.

Peter McBurney sent me a link to works by Danish artist Peter Callesen. He added:

I wonder if anyone has developed a mathematical theory of this work, to determine, for example, which cut-out shapes are possible or impossible. Presumably, there would be a link from such a theory to the math. theory of origami.

My old friend Owl sent me the following quote :

I realized that reading a piano piece is much like solving a math problem. Each note has a beat which is a fraction of a whole bar, and the sum of the notes’ beats in a bar should equal the numerator in the so called “time signature”, the fraction indicated on the left most side of the staff. (A staff is a series of bars.) The denominator in the time signature specifies the kind of note which would receive ONE beat. Thus, a time signature of 2/4 means that a quarter note (1/4) would have one beat, and each bar would have two beats; an eighth note (1/ would receive a half-beat, and the bar may have as many as four eighth notes, or a combination of one quarter note and two eighth notes, and so on and so forth. Whew! Beethoven must have been a good mathematician!