Patricia Rothman

A Brain on Fire: James Joseph Sylvester

Patricia Rothman celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the brilliant James Joseph Sylvester, whose ambitions to be recognised as a professional mathematician were hindered by the religious restrictions of the age.

The Man Who Invented Pi

In 1706 a little-known mathematics teacher named William Jones first used a symbol to represent the platonic concept of pi, an ideal that in numerical terms can be approached, but never reached.