Word: mathe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...excerpt, which suggests the possibility of a math-music link, quotes the 17th century mathematician Gottfried Leibniz: "Music is a hidden exercise in arithmetic, of a mind unconscious with dealing with numbers...
...Math Department's musical vibrancy is not only suggested on office doors. One math graduate student, when asked if he had musical interests, boasted of his growing prowess at "change-ringing," an experimental technique of ringing church and hand bells according to mathematical permutations...
...Another Math Department bystander darted into his office and returned a few seconds later with a large, awkward wooden object which says was a Renaissance-period ancestor of the flute. After demonstrating how to play the instrument, he passed it around among his friends, some of whom acknowledged that they were already familiar with a modern-day woodwind...
...Most of the people in my department play an instrument--many make career choices between math and music," remarks Math Department Chair Arthur M. Jaffe in an interview, as ancient music floated softly from a nearby compact disk player. Jaffe, proficient at piano and clarinet, habitually conducts "business" in his office to the tune of a favorite concerto or madrigal. "Somehow music seems to appeal to mathemeticians more than, say, reading," he notes...
What is behind this mysterious math-music link...