British mathematician G.H. Hardy once observed, “The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.”
You’ll find those words in a recent volume co-edited by SCU’s Gerald Alexanderson, professor of mathematics and the Valeriote Professor of Science. The G.H. Hardy Reader was jointly published by Cambridge University Press and the Mathematical Association of America.
New audiences recently became acquainted with Hardy through the film The Man Who Knew Infinity. Hardy, played by Jeremy Irons onscreen, was the mathematician who taught Srinivasa Ramanujan, who went on to become a mathematical pioneer in his own right.