The Beauty of Chalk | PloughDo Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards makes the case for slower, low-tech tools in the classroom." name="description"/>Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards makes the case for slower, low-tech tools in the classroom." property="og:description"/>Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards makes the case for slower, low-tech tools in the classroom." name="twitter:description"/>

Sign In to Your Account<br>Don’t have an account? Sign Up

Email addressMemberStack Attribute

We just sent you a 6-digit code.<br>Check your inbox and paste the code below.

CUSTOM CSS

Forgot Password<br>Sign In with Facebook

Sign In with Google

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Create an account<br>Already have an account? Login here.

First nameMemberStack Attribute

Last nameMemberStack Attribute

Email addressMemberStack Attribute

We just sent you a 6-digit code.<br>Check your inbox and paste the code below.

MemberStack Attribute

Sign Up with Facebook

Sign Up with Google

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

To reset your password<br>Enter your address, and we'll email instructions on how to reset your password. If you do not receive the email in the next few minutes, check your spam folder. The link in the email will only work once. Login here.

Email addressMemberStack Attribute

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

You have<br>{{score}} free articles remaining.

This is some text inside of a div block.

This is some text inside of a div block.<br>Already a subscriber?<br>Sign in

Try 3 months of unlimited access. Start your FREE TRIAL today. Cancel anytime.<br>START FREE TRIAL NOW

Home

Articles

The Beauty of Chalk

The Beauty of Chalk<br>Jessica Wynne’s Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards makes the case for slower, low-tech tools in the classroom.

Roy Peachey

October 24, 2023

Share

[.article__paragraph--cap] [.small-caps] In A Mathematician’s Apology [.small-caps] , G. H. Hardy writes, “The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.” Anyone who finds these words utterly baffling – maybe anyone who battled with long division or quadratic equations at school – should have a look at Jessica Wynne’s Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards .[.article__paragraph--cap]<br>Wynne, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, traveled across North and South America and into Europe to photograph mathematicians’ chalkboards. Nothing more. Not the classrooms in which those chalkboards were found or even the mathematicians who worked on them. Just the chalkboards and the mathematics that filled them. It might seem a niche project but the results are surprisingly beautiful. There really is no place in the world for ugly mathematics.<br>However, Wynne’s photographs tell only half the story. Accompanying each picture is a short meditation by the mathematicians whose work is seen on the chalkboards. These meditations focus not only on the mathematics, much of which is extremely high level, but also on the sheer physicality of the mathematicians’ work. We tend to think of mathematics as the most cerebral of disciplines, but in this book, we discover how mathematics involves the body just like any other craft.<br>[.imgcaption] Sahar Khan’s blackboard at Columbia University. [.smalltext] Photograph by Jessica Wynne, courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery [.smalltext] [.imgcaption]<br>But why chalkboards? Wouldn’t whiteboards do the job just as well? Aren’t chalkboards redundant in our high-tech world? Not according to Philippe Michel, who holds the chair of analytic number theory at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Michel sets the tone for the whole book by explaining that “the very first thing I did when I arrived in my office in Lausanne ten years ago was to ask that the ugly whiteboard, with its smelly red pen, be replaced by a true chalkboard.” Chalkboards are easier on the eye than whiteboards, and while writing with chalk is slower than with a “smelly pen,” in this case slower may be better because it allows the reader time to process. Repeatedly, the mathematicians in this book expatiate on their love of chalkboards: “I couldn’t live without them,” says Benson Farb, professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago. It’s “an old friend,” says Gilles Courtois, director of research at CNRS, Institut de Mathématique de Jussieu. Étienne Ghys even convinced his wife to allow him to hang a chalkboard in their bedroom, though he did eventually agree to remove it when the amount of chalk dust on the sheets became unmanageable.<br>Since mathematics is as...