01/07/2024

Marcelo Viana launches book 'Stories of Mathematics'

Marcelo Viana (à dir.) e o jornalista Bernardo Esteves (à esq.)

IMPA's Director-General, Marcelo Viana, launched this weekend in São Paulo the book “Histórias da Matemática: da contagem nos dedos à inteligência artificial”, an anthology of texts published in his column in Folha de S.Paulo . The launch on Sunday (30) took place during the Book Fair, in Pacaembu, and included the round table “Mathematics for those in the humanities”, where Viana defended the importance of the proximity between the human and exact sciences.

“Participating in the São Paulo book fair was a very interesting and enjoyable experience, partly because it gave me access to a wider audience, outside of academia, but no less sensitive to the themes I discuss in the Histories of Mathematics,” said the director-general of IMPA.

As the title highlights, Viana's book addresses mathematical concepts from Antiquity to the AI era, "starting with Pythagoras, passing through Newton, Fibonacci and arriving at contemporary issues such as the World Cup soccer ball, the workings of the Secret Santa game and translators boosted by artificial intelligence," emphasizes the publisher Tinta da China.

The launch of the work was highlighted in Folha de S.Paulo last Thursday (27). The newspaper cited some of the stories told by Viana, such as that of Pope Sylvester II, leader of the Catholic Church between the years 999 and 1003. Sylvester tried to popularize the decimal number system in place of Roman numerals and also tried to introduce instruments such as the abacus and the astrolabe, but ended up being accused of Satanism as a result of his advanced ideas for the time. The pope's tomb was even opened to ensure that he was not a demon.

The book also addresses the dilemma of whether mathematics was discovered or invented – what do you think? Nor does it leave out the mathematical problem that has challenged mathematicians since the 17th century: how to pack oranges in a way that makes the best possible use of space? It was only in 2017 that scientists proved it was impossible to make better use of the box's volume than 74%.

In the book, Viana also shows that many mathematical concepts came from Chinese and Indian civilizations and arrived in Europe through Arabic translations. The director-general of IMPA also included challenges for readers in the work, a practice already adopted in a column in Folha , but without an answer key.