This eighth volume of Imagine Math is different from all the previous ones. The reason is very clear: in the last two years, the world changed, and we still do not know what the world of tomorrow will look like. Difficult to make predictions.
This volume has a subtitle Dreaming Venice. Venice, the dream city of dreams, that miraculous image of a city on water that resisted for hundreds of years, has become in the last two years truly unreachable. Many things tie this book to the previous ones. Once again, this volume also starts like Imagine Math 7, with a homage to the Italian artist Mimmo Paladino who created exclusively for the Imagine Math 8 volume a new series of ten original and unique works of art dedicated to Piero della Francesca. Many artists, art historians, designers and musicians are involved in the new book, including Linda D. Henderson and Marco Pierini, Claudio Ambrosini and Davide Amodio. Space also for comics and mathematics in a Disney key. Many applications, from Origami to mathematical models for world hunger. Particular attention to classical and modern architecture, with Tullia Iori.
As usual, the topics are treated in a way that is rigorous but captivating, detailed and full of evocations. This is an all-embracing look at the world of mathematics and culture.
Michele Emmer, professor of Mathematics at the University of Rome "Sapienza" until 2015. Member of IVSLA - Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Venice. His area of interest: PDE and minimal surfaces, relationships between mathematics and arts, architecture, cinema, culture. Member since 1992 of the board of the Journal "Leonardo: art, science and technology", MIT Press. Filmmaker, author of the film series "Art and Math" distributed in many countries. He organizes since 1997 the annual conference on "Mathematics and Culture" in Venice; editor of the series "Mathematics and Culture" and “Imagine Math”, Springer-Verlag; the series "The Visual Mind", MIT press. Books: “Bolle di sapone tra arte e matematica”, 2009, Viareggio Award Best Italian essay 2010; “Numeri immaginari: cinema e matematica”, Bollati Boringhieri, 2011; “Imagine Math 6”, Springer 2018; ”Imagine Math 7”, Springer, 2020; “Racconto Matematico” Bollati Boringhieri, 2019; M. Emmer, M. Pierini, ed. “Soap Bubbles from Vanitas to Architecture”, Exhibition, Catalogue, 16 March-9 June 2019, Galleria Nazionale Umbria, Perugia; M. Emmer, ed, Mimmo Paladino Mathematica, catalogue exhibition Venice March 2019. “Persone Racconto Russo”, to appear 2021.
Marco Abate is a Full Professor of Geometry at the University of Pisa. He has written more than one hundred scientific papers and textbooks, as well as several papers on the popularization of mathematics. His interests include holomorphic dynamics, geometric function theory, differential geometry, writing (comic books and more), photography, origami, and travelling (having already visited Antarctica his next destination is the Moon).
