A photographic exploration of mathematicians' chalkboards

"A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns," wrote the British mathematician G. H. Hardy. In Do Not Erase, photographer Jessica Wynne presents remarkable examples of this idea through images of mathematicians' chalkboards. While other fields have replaced chalkboards with whiteboards and digital presentations, mathematicians remain loyal to chalk for puzzling out their ideas and communicating their research. Wynne offers more than one hundred stunning photographs of these chalkboards, gathered from a diverse group of mathematicians around the world. The photographs are accompanied by essays from each mathematician, reflecting on their work and processes. Together, pictures and words provide an illuminating meditation on the unique relationships among mathematics, art, and creativity.

The mathematicians featured in this collection comprise exciting new voices alongside established figures, including Sun-Yung Alice Chang, Alain Connes, Misha Gromov, Andre Neves, Kasso Okoudjou, Peter Shor, Christina Sormani, Terence Tao, Claire Voisin, and many others. The companion essays give insights into how the chalkboard serves as a special medium for mathematical expression. The volume also includes an introduction by the author, an afterword by New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson, and biographical information for each contributor.

Do Not Erase is a testament to the myriad ways that mathematicians use their chalkboards to reveal the conceptual and visual beauty of their discipline-shapes, figures, formulas, and conjectures created through imagination, argument, and speculation.

About the Author
Jessica Wynne is associate professor of photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her photographs are in collections at the Morgan Library & Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and Fortune. Wynne is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery and she lives in New York City. Twitter @jessicawynne6 Instagram @jessica___wynne Website www.jessicawynne.com

Reviews
"Winner of the PROSE Award in Popular Science and Mathematics, Association of American Publishers"
"Do Not Erase . . . reveals the scribbles, workings and eureka moments of minds bursting with equations and theories, a paean to mental graft and the blackboards that display it. You can almost feel the tickle of dust in the nose, the thump of chalk on the board, the swish of a cuff brushing away a mistake."---Nicola Davis, The Observer
"American photographer Jessica Wynne's Do Not Erase captures the visual workings of mathematicians in producing formulas and illustrating their thoughts."---Cheyenne Darko, The Financial Times Snapshot
"This is an original, elegant, if baffling book."---Andrew Robinson, Nature
"[Wynne] forces us to look at the chalkboards themselves, to see them as documents or artifacts, without the irresistible distraction of human presence."---Brian Hayes, American Scientist
"This is a wonderful mirror that Jessica Wynne shows us mathematicians of a world that is so very familiar when looking at it from the inside of our world of mathematics. . . . [that also] forces us to think in a different way about what we are doing day in and day out."---Adhemar Bultheel, MAA Reviews
"An incredible, intense delight to read and study . . . Do Not Erase has become my favorite book to randomly explore."---Edward J. Valauskas, First Monday
"[A] testament to the myriad ways that mathematicians use their chalkboards to reveal the conceptual and visual beauty of their discipline-shapes, figures, formulas, and conjectures created through imagination, argument, and speculation." * MathSciNet *
"Beautiful. . . . [This] book will also remain a monument for history, too."---Athanase Papadopoulos, zbMATH Open



Book Information
ISBN 9780691199221
Author Jessica Wynne
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press