Museum Exhibit Mathematica Is Still Going Strong at 50

“Mathematica: A World of Numbers and Beyond” remains one of the most popular exhibits at Boston’s Museum of Science after nearly fifty years.

Created in 1961 by husband and wife team Charles and Ray Eames, the exhibit was sponsored by IBM and, according to a recent article by Joan Wickersham in The Boston Globe, “is emblematic of a time when Americans were waking up to ‘the space age’ and ‘the computer age’— a new era whose mathematical underpinnings were intriguing but also intimidating to many people.”

Mathematics, the exhibit demonstrates, is probability: In a tall glass case, balls drop through a series of pegs into a pattern that follows a bell-shaped curve outlined on the case.

Mathematics is about minimum surface area: Geometric figures dipped into soapy water become oddly-shaped, beautiful three-dimensional bubbles.

Mathematics is about topology: A gigantic Moebius strip is represented by an electric track. Press a button and an abstract train traverses its surface right-side up and upside down.

The exhibit's interactive displays, suspended shapes, images, objects, and games attest, therefore, to what Bertrand Russell said: “One of the chiefest triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having discovered what mathematics really is.’’

“In an age when museum and exhibit design seems to involve making things bigger, newer, sleeker, slicker, fancier, louder, and more techy,” wrote Wickersham, “the Eameses’ ‘Mathematica’ is simply very smart. And so is the museum’s apparent commitment not to mess with it.”

Source: The Boston Globe (September 17, 2010)