isquaredmathematics beyond the imaginary

Winter 2007/8

Public-key cryptography Mathematical poetry

DISPELLING
THE MYTHS:
THE REAL MECHANICS
OF FLYING

2.90
Interview: the mathematician
who is developing an artificial
pancreas for diabetes patients
 isquared Volume 1 Number 2

Editorial
Maths plays an integral role in many aspects of modern life that we take
for granted. For example, fluid mechanics is vital for our understanding of
how aircraft stay up, and is used daily by designers seeking to build planes
which are more efficient (and thus more environmentally friendly).
Surprisingly, many teachers actually give an incorrect explanation of how
lift is achieved in flight. In this issues cover article, Ophir Samson tackles
the common misconceptions associated with the field of aerodynamics.
Another important use of mathematics in the 21st century is in
cryptography. Every time you pay by credit card on the internet, use a
cash machine or even make a call on your mobile phone, encryption
algorithms are being employed to protect your personal information and
privacy. In his article David Mireles Morales explains how these
encryption systems work.
On a similar theme, Rebecca Morris explores how maths has been used
through the ages, from number systems to logistics. Plus, in a special
24
interview, mathematician Roman Hovorka discusses how he is building
an artificial pancreas to treat diabetes sufferers. This issue of iSquared
also contains a book review, a profile of Georg Cantor and numerous
puzzles. You can even take a break and enjoy some mathematical poetry,
taken from a new book by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs. If poems about
mathematics seem a strange concept, consider that patterns are beloved
by mathematicians and poets alike, so the two disciplines are not as
disparate as we might think. If you look hard enough, maths can indeed
be found everywhere!

Sarah Shepherd

Cover image by Robert Hackett

iSquared magazine, published quarterly. Volume 1 Number 2 (ISSN 1755-7275).
Postal address: iSquared magazine, 1 Pound Cottages, Shillinglee, Godalming, Surrey, GU8 4SZ.
Email: editor@isquaredmagazine.co.uk. Website: www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk.
Printed in the UK by
2 iSquared magazine THE MAGAZINE PRINTING COMPANY Winter 2007/8
www.magprint.co.uk
 winter 2007/8

contents
FEATURES
The key to a secure future 8
By David Mireles Morales
Why public-key cryptography is vital for confidential communications in the digital age.

Cover Story: The theory of flight 16

By Ophir Samson
Many people are given an incorrect explanation of how aircraft achieve lift. Here
we look at how it actually works.

Calculations, calculus and computing 24

By Rebecca Morris
Some historical applications of mathematics, from counting to route-finding.

Mathematics and Poetry 28

Selections from a new book of poetry by mathematician Michael Bartholomew-Biggs.

REGULARS
News 4
Mathematical greats 14
The life of Georg Cantor, whose theory of the infinite brought fierce opposition
from his contemporaries.

Book review 22
The Mathematicians Brain, by David Ruelle. Plus, a selection of other recent releases.

Interview 30
Roman Hovorka explains how maths is being used to develop an artificial pancreas
for diabetes patients.

Subscription form 34
Puzzles 36

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 3

 news
New model for
cancer mutations
Theoretical cancer models have
previously assumed tumour
development to be driven by just a
handful of genetic mutations. But
new evidence recently emerged
which suggested that as many as 20
mutations may be involved in tumour
causation. Now scientists at Harvard
and Johns Hopkins universities have
come up with a mathematical model
that takes into account this complex
mutational landscape.
By modelling colon cancer as a
stochastic process, Niko
Beerenwinkel and colleagues were
able to work out the time taken for a
benign tumour to turn malignant.
They found that the cancer
progression was governed by
multiple mutations, each of which
had a small but positive effect on net
cell growth. The advantage conferred
by specific mutations was shown to
Cancer progression of Haifa in Israel has developed a
is governed by
multiple mutations The computer program translates
have a significant influence on the
rate of tumour evolution, while the
mutation rate and the size of the
population at risk were less important painting that it hasnt seen before.
factors.
This model also helps to explain
the large variation in tumour sizes
and development times that have
been observed in patients with colon
cancer, and which have long
perplexed researchers and clinicians. computer learns to recognise the
Such biological heterogeneity arises
in the model due to the small
contributions of multiple randomly
occurring mutations. The progress of
each cancer will thus depend on a
complement of mutations which is
unique to that individual.
4 iSquared magazine
The field of computer vision is very
A new computer program is
able to recognise whether an The 2007 Nobel Prize for Economics
artwork is a genuine Da Vinci has been awarded to three American
Computers learn to
recognise artworks
A computer scientist at the University
Hurwicz in the 1960s and 70s and
program that has the ability to
identify artworks by different artists.
visual images into mathematical
language, which then allows the
computer to recognise works by the
same artist, even if it is shown a
According to Professor Daniel Keren,
the programs creator, as soon as the
computer learns to recognise the
clock drawings of Dali, it will
recognise his other paintings, even
without clocks. As soon as the
swirls of Van Gogh, it will recognise
them in pictures it has never seen
before.
The program could be useful for
someone buying an artwork, since it
is able to determine whether that
work is genuinely by the original
artist. However, computer vision is
still very much inferior to human
vision. For example, a computer will
have difficulty recognising that a
picture is of a human face a task
that we find very simple. But
Professor Keren believes his work is
an important advance in this area:
complex and multifaceted. We hope
that our new development is another
step forward in this field.
Nobel success for
economists
mathematicians. Leonid Hurwicz of
the University of Minnesota, Eric
Maskin of Princeton University and
Roger Myerson of the University of
Chicago won the prestigious award
for their work in Game Theory.
Mechanism Design Theory, a branch
of game theory, was initiated by
later developed by Maskin and
Myerson.
Economists have shown that under
ideal conditions, financial markets
ensure the efficient allocation of
scarce resources. However, perfect
markets are often not found in
practice, for example when
transactions take place within firms,
or when consumers are not perfectly
informed. Mechanism Design Theory
enables economists to find the
optimal allocation of resources in
markets where conditions are not
ideal. It makes it possible to predict
whether markets will work, and to
design successful trading
mechanisms. Maskin and Myerson
(both aged 56) and Hurwicz (who is
now aged 90) share the prize, which
is worth $1.5m.
Winter 2007/8

Ice study to improve
climate predictions
Mathematicians at the University of
Utah have conducted a study into
how salt water from the oceans
travels through sea ice. By analysing
sea ice and modelling its behaviour
mathematically, Professor Ken
Golden and colleagues have
discovered that brine moving through
sea ice has universal transport
properties. It means that almost the
exact same formulas describing how
water flows through sedimentary
rocks in the Earths crust apply to
brine flow in sea ice, even though the
microstructural details of the rocks
are quite different from sea ice, says
Golden.
Sea ice is an important factor in
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
climate change. The reflection of
solar radiation from polar ice packs
helps to prevent too much heat being
absorbed by the Earths surface. In
spring, meltwater forms on the ice
surface, critically affecting the
reflectivity of the ice caps. The
drainage of the pools of meltwater
depends on the permeability of the
ice. Golden says, Brine drainage out
of sea ice and the subsequent
formation of Antarctic bottom water
is an important part of the worlds
oceans. He adds, In the Antarctic, colleagues about a hypothetical
ice formed from flooding of ice
surfaces is an important component
of the ice pack, and this formation is
dependent on brine flow. Golden
hopes that the study will help to
improve predictions of global
warming, by incorporating its
findings on sea ice permeability into
current climate change models.
Sea ice is an important factor in climate change
RSA encryption may
be vulnerable
Adi Shamir, one of the developers of
the RSA public-key encryption
algorithm, has warned that the
security of the worldwide
e-commerce system could be at risk.
The New York Times recently
reported that Shamir, a cryptographer
at the Weizmann Institute of Science
in Israel, wrote in a research note to
maths error that could allow hackers
to break the protection provided by
RSA.
A subtle mathematical error in a
computer chip would potentially
allow an attacker to calculate the
secret key used by that computer to
decode encrypted messages. To
initiate an attack would simply
Courtesy of the U.S National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
iSquared magazine 5
 news
require knowledge of the flaw, plus
the ability to send an encrypted
message to the protected computer. A which are abstract devices that
division bug was discovered in
Intels Pentium microprocessor in
1994, and a multiplication bug has
been found in Microsoft Excel 2007. Turing and can be adapted to
The increasing complexity of
microprocessors means the
likelihood of undetected errors is
higher than ever, especially since the special type of Turing machine that
designs for the chips are trade secrets has the ability to simulate any other
under legal protection, making it
A hypothetical maths able
error could allow
hackers to break
RSA encryption
difficult to check for errors.
RSA encryption software is widely
used to protect e-commerce
transactions from hackers, so any
vulnerability of the algorithm could
significantly compromise global
security. In such an attack, Shamir
says, millions of PCs can be
attacked simultaneously, without
having to manipulate the operating
environment of each one of them
individually. However, the flaw
described by Shamir is hypothetical,
and he said he had no evidence that
anyone is currently using such an
attack.
To find out more about RSA
encryption, see article on page 8.
Wolfram Prize
Controversy
Alex Smith, an undergraduate at the
University of Birmingham, has won
a $25,000 prize by solving a problem
set by mathematician and
6 iSquared magazine
businessman Stephen Wolfram. The knots for over a hundred years, little
challenge involved Turing machines, research has been carried out into
how knots form in practice. Now
function by manipulating symbols. Douglas Smith, a physicist at the
Turing machines were first described University of California, San Diego,
in 1936 by the mathematician Alan and his research assistant Dorian
Raymer have published the first
simulate the logic of any mechanical model of how knots form.
computational device. The researchers carried out their
A Universal Turing Machine is a experiments by dropping a piece of
string into a plastic box, and then
spinning the box using a computer-
Turing machine. This means that, controlled motor. They repeated the
given enough time and memory, it is experiment thousands of times with
to solve almost any problem in
mathematics. Smith, who is just 20-
varying string length, string stiffness,
box size and rotation speed, and
years old and taught himself classified the knots that formed. It is
programming, was awarded the prize virtually impossible to distinguish
for proving that the simplest type of different knots just by looking at
Turing machine (known as the 2,3 them, says Raymer. So I developed
Turing machine) is in fact a Universal a computer program to do it. The
Turing Machine. computer program counts each
However, not all mathematicians crossing of the string. It notes
are in agreement over the awarding whether the crossing is under or over,
of the prize. Professor Vaughan Pratt and whether the string follows a path
of Stanford University has pointed to the left or to the right. The result
out an elementary fallacy in is a bunch of numbers that can be
Smiths 40-page proof. But
Wolfram Research, who Alan Turing
organised the competition,
insists that Pratts
interpretation is incorrect
and stand by the decision of
the prize committee.
Understanding
knots
Knot formation has
important applications in
several fields, notably in cell
biology, where enzymes are
involved in unknotting
tangled DNA, thus allowing
transcription and replication
to take place. However,
although mathematicians
have studied theoretical
Winter 2007/8

translated into a mathematical
fingerprint for a knot.
Smith and Raymer used their
experimental findings to propose a
simple model for knot formation.
Their model can explain why
increasing the length of the string
increases the probability of getting
complex knots, while decreasing the
box size and increasing string
stiffness decreases the probability of
knot formation. This latter effect may
be the reason why the foetal
umbilical cord, which is confined in
the amniotic sac, is rarely known to
become knotted.
New theory of
everything proposed
For years, physicists have been
searching for a universal theory of
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
A theory of everything would give a unified model of the universe
everything. Such a theory would
explain and link all four fundamental
forces of nature: electromagnetism,
the strong nuclear force, the weak
nuclear force and gravity. Although
many unification theories have been
proposed, most current candidates for
a theory of everything are based on
string theory, in which particles take
the form of tiny strings. But now
Garrett Lisi, who does not hold a
university post but conducts physics
research in his spare time, has
advanced a new theory of everything.
In Lisis Exceptionally Simple
Theory of Everything, all the
elementary particles and forces of the
universe are associated with the
points of a mathematical pattern.
This pattern, known as E8, is a type
of geometrical structure called a Lie
Algebra. It has 248 dimensions and
was first formulated by
Image courtesy of NASA
mathematicians in the late nineteenth
century. Lisi says E8 is beautiful not
only because it contains aesthetically
appealing patterns, but because it has
deep theoretical connections
intertwining through almost all other
branches of mathematics. It is both
superficially and deeply beautiful,
and I will find it very satisfying if
this is the geometric structure at the
heart of our universe.
One advantage of the model is that
it can be used to make testable
predictions. Lisi is making
calculations that will allow the theory
to be tested against experimental
results from the Large Hadron
Collider, which is currently under
construction at CERN in Switzerland.
He says, this is an all-or-nothing
kind of theory its either going to
be exactly right, or spectacularly
wrong. Sarah Shepherd
iSquared magazine 7
 The key to a
secure future
Why public-key cryptography is vital for
confidential communications in the digital age
By David Mireles Morales
D uring the last two decades, the world has seen a
revolution in the way that information is
transmitted between organisations and
individuals. More and more frequently, the nature of a
communication requires that information sent over a
public channel has to be kept secret. The study of the
methods used to ensure confidentiality is known as
cryptography, and the procedures used to scramble the
information so that it can be safely transmitted are known
as encryption algorithms.
Typically, two individuals who want to communicate
would agree on a general scrambling method or
encryption scheme, whose specific operation depends on
a key. In the following example I will use the two most
famous names in cryptography: Alice and Bob. If Alice
wanted to send Bob an email with confidential
information, they must have agreed on a common key k
beforehand. Alice would then take the email m, encrypt
8 iSquared magazine
(scramble) it using the key k, and send the scrambled
message s to Bob. Upon receiving s, Bob would proceed
to recover m from k and s, i.e. decrypt the message.
Until the 1970s all known encryption algorithms
worked as I have just described. That is, the key used to
decrypt the message was the same as the key used to
encrypt it. In 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman
published an article titled New directions in
cryptography, where they challenged this approach.
Diffie and Hellman came up with a new kind of
encryption algorithm where the encryption key kE is
different from the decryption key kD, and where knowing
kE does not automatically imply knowing or being able
to calculate kD. These algorithms are collectively
known as asymmetric encryption algorithms or public-key
algorithms, and their traditional counterparts where the
encryption and decryption keys are the same are known
as symmetric or private-key algorithms.
Winter 2007/8
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 9

Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman: inventors of public-key cryptography
In order to understand the importance of public-key
cryptography, let us think about the millions of
computers, mobile phones, cash points, PIN terminals
and on-line retailers trying to communicate with each
other. If we wanted to secure their interaction using
symmetric encryption algorithms, every pair of devices
would have to agree on a shared secret key before they
could communicate. Ensuring that every pair of devices
that might want to communicate share a secret key is
utterly impractical all of our storage capacity would be
used up by billions of keys that might never be used. Any
attempt to secure the communication between all these
devices would have a mind-boggling complexity.
From this perspective, it is clear that the only practical
solution to the problem would be to use asymmetric
encryption schemes. That way, if two devices want to
communicate, all they need to do is find each others
public encryption key (which could be stored in a
directory like the yellow pages) and use it to encrypt their
messages.
In their seminal paper Diffie and Hellman did not
actually present a public-key encryption algorithm.
Instead they presented a protocol that would allow two
different parties to generate a common secret key. The
difference between the Diffie-Hellman key-agreement
protocol and a public key encryption algorithm is that in
the Diffie-Hellman proposal both parties need to interact,
10 iSquared magazine
Source: Wikimedia Commons
whereas the idea of public key encryption is more akin to
having a personal telephone number, that can be found in
the yellow pages and used to send a message without any
effort from the message recipient.
In this article I will describe both the Diffie-Hellman
proposal and the popular RSA public-key encryption
scheme. Before doing this there are a few observations I
would like to make. Since public-key encryption
algorithms solve a more difficult problem than their
symmetric counterparts, they also tend to be significantly
The aim of the cryptographer
is to make an attack so difficult
that it becomes impossible
in practice
slower. When encrypting large documents, public-key
algorithms are used to encrypt a key for a symmetric
encryption algorithm, which is in turn used to encrypt the
bulk of the message. This approach provides the best of
both worlds.
In some cases the information needs to be encrypted in
Winter 2007/8
real time with very limited computational resources (a
call using a mobile phone comes to mind). In such cases
a potential attacker might not have the same time and
resources constraints. An important phone call could be
attacked using a very powerful computer for several days
or weeks. This difference between the computing power
available to encrypt the messages and the computing
power that could be used to decrypt them makes the
study of cryptography all the more interesting.
A characteristic of public-key encryption schemes that
is sometimes overlooked is that they do not provide
perfect security. There is always the chance that an
attacker might recover the secret message. The aim of
cryptographers is to make an attack so difficult that it
becomes impossible in practice. Any reasonably secure
asymmetric encryption algorithm would take longer than
the age of the universe to be broken using any known
method of attack. In contrast, there is a symmetric
encryption algorithm that offers perfect security. That is
to say, there is a theorem that guarantees that it is
impossible to recover a message encrypted using this
algorithm, which is known as the one time pad. However,
this perfect security can only be achieved in a
theoretically perfect situation, not in a real-world setting, Diffie-Hellman key exchange
and the impracticalities of the one time pad mean that it is
little-used.
The techniques used in public-key cryptography also
involve the generation of digital signatures. These are
constructions that prove the authenticity of a document or
device. For example, a mobile phone trying to connect to
the network has to prove that it is indeed the phone it
claims to be, banks want to make sure that any
transaction order received on-line really comes from the
account owner and any time you buy something using the
internet you want to make sure that the computer you are
communicating with doesn't belong to some hacker. Later
in this article, I will describe an algorithm that can be
used to produce digital signatures.
A mathematical interlude
To describe our encryption algorithms we will need to use
an abstract object that depends on a number n, where n is
a positive integer. This object is known as the integers
modulo n.
If two numbers leave the same reminder when divided
by n, we say that they are equal modulo n. For example,
27 = 93 modulo 11 because
27 = 5 + (211) and 93 = 5 + (811),
14 = 120 modulo 53 because
14 = 14 + (053) and 120 = 14 + (253),
-8 = 92 modulo 25 because
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
-8 = 17 + (-125) and 92 = 17 + (325).
To indicate that a and b are equal modulo n we will write
a b (mod n).
Since we are only interested in the remainder of a
number upon division by n, we say that the set of integers
modulo n is the collection of numbers {0,1,2,,n1},
because every possible remainder is represented exactly
once in this set.
We need one other ingredient to understand the
encryption schemes. This the definition of a prime
number:
We say that a positive integer p is prime if it
can only be exactly divided by 1 and itself.
For example, the number 5 is prime because it can only
be divided by 1 and 5, but 21 is not prime because 21/3 =
7, so there is a number other that 1 and 21 that exactly
divides 21.
To describe this protocol, we will require the services of
the evil Eve, who has access to all the information
exchanged and wants to find Alices and Bobs secrets.
The Diffie-Hellman key-exchange protocol works as
follows:
1) Alice and Bob agree on a large prime
p and an integer g.
2) Alice picks a random number a between
1 and p1 and computes x where
x = ga (mod p).
3) Bob chooses a random number b between
1 and p1 and computes y where
y = gb (mod p).
4) Alice sends x to Bob. Bob sends y to Alice.
5) Alice calculates ya = gab (mod n). Bob
computes xb = gab (mod n).
6) Alice and Bob use gab (mod n) as a
shared secret key for some symmetric
encryption algorithm.
The details of how Alice and Bob agree on the prime p
and the integer g are not important. In practice these
could be standard values, looked up in a table or
computed on the spot.
To see why the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange protocol is
secure, we will analyse the information that Eve has. In
iSquared magazine 11

Example of Diffe-Hellman Key Exchange:
1) Alice and Bob agree on g = 2 and
p = 1,000,003.
2) Alice chooses a = 456957 and
calculates
x = 351377 = 2456957 (mod 1000003).
3) Bob selects b = 762257 and computes
y = 297261 = 2762257 (mod 1000003).
4) Alice and Bob exchange x and y and
find y762257 = 173604 = x456957 (mod
1000003) as the shared key.
the example above, Eve knows that p=1000003, g=2,
x=351377 and y=297261, but finding gab from x and y
alone is a very difficult problem. In general, finding gab
only from ga, gb, g and p is known as the Diffie-Hellman
problem (or DHP) and no efficient solution is known.
The only known general method for solving the DHP is
to find a from g and ga, and use it with gb to compute gab.
The problem of finding a from g and ga is known as the
discrete logarithm problem or DLP. It is not known if the
DLP is equivalent to the DHP.
Using numbers modulo p in the Diffie-Hellman
protocol has two great advantages. Firstly, exponentiation
(raising to powers) doesnt make the numbers explode.
For example, 2456957 has 137,558 digits, but modulo
1000003 it has just 6 digits. Using the integers modulo p
will let us work with numbers smaller than p rather than
numbers with an astronomical number of digits. The
second great advantage of using numbers modulo p is
that the power to which the number g is being raised is
disguised. In our particular example, finding that
b=762257 only from the fact that 2b = 297261 (mod
1000003) is very hard. In other words, the DLP is a very
difficult problem for integers modulo p.
RSA encryption
RSA was the first public-key encryption scheme ever
proposed. It was developed in 1977 by the MIT computer
scientists Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leo Adleman, and
named from their initials. A subsequent article by Martin
Gardner in Scientific American launched RSA to fame
and caused an upsurge in the general interest in
cryptography and number theory. (In fact, some
documents recently declassified by the British
government reveal that the idea behind RSA had been
proposed by Clifford Cocks, a mathematician working for
the intelligence agency GCHQ, as early as 1973. This
12 iSquared magazine
was kept secret until 1997.)
The idea behind RSA is very simple. Suppose that
Alice wants to set up a public-key/private-key pair. She
would first choose two big prime numbers p and q at
random. She would then calculate n=pq and find
numbers d and e such that d e = 1 mod (p1)(q1).
This can all be done very efficiently. Alice would then
publish n and d, keeping e, p and q secret. In other words,
Alices public key consists of the numbers n and d, while
her private key consists of e, p and q.
Using the integers modulo p
means we dont have to work
with numbers with an
astronomical number of digits
If Bob wants to send Alice a message, he would first look
her up in a directory and see that Alices public key
consists of the numbers n and d. Bob would then
represent the message m as a member of the set of
integers modulo n (i.e.oneof0,1,2...n1). The details of
how this is done are not interesting one method could
be described in the directory with Alices public key.
Finally, Bob would calculate c = md (mod n) and send c
to Alice.
After receiving c, Alice can easily recover m (there is a
theorem that guarantees that m = (md)e = ce mod n).
Example of RSA encryption:
If p = 11 and q = 17, we have
n = 11 17 = 187
and
160=(111)(171).
Let d = 3 and e = 107. Then
3 107 = 321 = 1 + (2 160)
So
d e = 1 (mod n).
Then Alices public key is
n = 187 and d = 3.
If Bobs message is m = 23, then
Bob computes
c = md = 233 (mod 187)
and finds that c = 12. Bob then
sends c = 12 to Alice and, lo and
behold!, Alice can recover the
secret message m as
m = 23 = 12107 (mod 187).
Of course, in practice p and q are much larger than 11
and 17, as used in the above example. The smallest
Winter 2007/8
practical implementation of RSA When your mobile phone connects to a network it
would use primes p and q bigger than uses a digital signature to prove its identity
2512.
Again, if we analyse the
information that a potential
eavesdropper could gather, we see
that n, d are public, and Bob has sent
Alice c = md. These are all the
elements of the scheme that have
been revealed. Recovering m from n,

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Author: kevinzim

d and c alone is a very difficult
problem known as the RSA problem,
and no efficient way to solve it is
known.
If one could factor n and recover p
and q, it would be very easy to
recover e, and the RSA scheme would
be broken. However, just as the
relation between the DLP and the
DHP is not well understood, it is not
known if the only way to solve the
RSA problem is by factoring n. Understanding the
The schemes that we have presented are only the tip of
precise relation between factoring and the RSA problem
the iceberg. Cryptographers have developed many
is an important open question.
fantastic algorithms, some of which are wacky ideas
important only as theoretical constructions, while others
are used every day in hundreds of applications. The
Digital signatures revolution in communications that we have witnessed
could not have been possible without the use of public-
Suppose that Alice wants to sign a message m. If she has key cryptography.
a RSA public-key (n, d) with corresponding private key
(p, q, e), she can proceed as follows:
About the Author
1) Represent m as an element of the set of David Mireles Morales was
integers modulo n{0,1,2,,n1}. born in Mexico City and
2) Calculate s = me (mod n). completed a BSc degree in
3) Use s as the signature of the message m. Mathematics at Mexico's
National Autonomous
If Bob receives the message m and its signature s, he can University. He is currently
verify that Alice created s by checking that sd = m mod n studying for a PhD in
Cryptography and Algorithmic
(recall that m = (md)e mod n). Trying to forge a signature Number Theory under the supervision of Dr. Steven
generating s from m, d and n is an instance of the RSA Galbraith at Royal Holloway, University of London.
problem, and we have mentioned that no efficient way to This academic year he is a visiting student at the
do this is known . This signature scheme is therefore Oxford Mathematical Institute.
considered secure.

FURTHER READING
New directions in cryptography. W. Diffie and M.E. Hellman, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
IT-22, No.6, 1976, pp.644-654.
A new kind of cipher that would take millions of years to break. M. Gardner, Scientific American,
August 1977, pp.120-124.
A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems. R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir and
L. Adleman, Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, Vol.21, No.2, 1978, pp.120-126.
The Code Book. Simon Singh, Fourth Estate, 2002.

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 13

 mathematical greats
George Cantor:
The Father of Set Theory
Georg Cantor was born in St series seems to
Petersburg, Russia in 1845, the eldest have inspired
of six children. Cantors father was a him to look
Jew converted to Protestantism, and into the
his mother had been born a Catholic. foundations of
Cantors father was a sensitive and mathematical
gifted man who loved his children analysis. He
deeply and wanted them to live produced a
successful and rewarding lives. beautiful
Cantor was educated early in his life treatment of
by private tutoring. He attended irrational
primary school in St Petersburg, and numbers and
when he was eleven years old the commenced in
family moved to Germany for a 1874 his
warmer climate, due to his fathers revolutionary
poor health. Cantor inherited his work on set
parents considerable musical and theory and the
artistic talents. He also took a deep theory of the
interest in medieval theology and its infinite. With
intricate arguments on the continuous this latter work,
and the infinite. Instead of preparing Cantor created
for a career in engineering, as his a whole new
father suggested, Cantor decided to field of mathematical research. He to show that there was more than one
concentrate on philosophy, physics, developed the theory of transfinite kind of infinity. Infinity had always
and mathematics. In 1860 Cantor numbers based on a mathematical been a forbidden subject in
graduated with an outstanding report, treatment of the actual infinite and mathematics. Gauss had stated that
which mentioned in particular his created an arithmetic of transfinite infinity should only be used as a
exceptional skills in mathematics. numbers analogous to the arithmetic way of speaking and not as a
In 1862, Cantor entered the Federal of finite numbers. mathematical value. Most
Polytechnic Institute in Zurich and Early in his career, Cantor was mathematicians followed Gausss
began studying mathematics. After already having to confront the strong advice and stayed away. Infinity was
his fathers death in 1863, Cantor opposition of one of the most often taken as a useful abstraction
shifted his studies to the University eminent mathematicians of his day. which helped mathematicians reason
of Berlin. There he studied under Leopold Kronecker disliked much of about the finite world, for example
some of the greatest mathematicians Cantors set theory and the use of infinite limit cases in
of the day, including Leopold fundamentally disagreed with calculus. The infinite was deemed to
Kronecker and Karl Weierstrass. Cantors work. When Cantor have at most a potential existence,
After receiving his doctorate, Cantor submitted a paper to Crelles Journal rather than an actual existence.
was unable to find good employment in 1877, Kronecker did his best to However, in Cantors theory, infinity
and was forced to accept a position as prevent it from being published. has an actual existence.
an unpaid lecturer and later as an Cantor greatly resented Kroneckers Cantor considered infinite sets not
assistant professor at the Backwater opposition to his work and never as merely going on forever but as
University of Halle, where he was to submitted any further papers to completed entities, that is having an
remain for the rest of his life. Crelles Journal. actual though infinite number of
Cantors early interests were in This paper marked the birth of set members. He called these actual
number theory, indeterminate theory. Previously, all infinite infinite numbers transfinite numbers.
equations and trigonometric series. collections had been assumed to be of Cantor believed that misuse of the
The subtle theory of trigonometric the same size; Cantor was the first infinite in mathematics had justly

14 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

 inspired a horror of the infinite
among careful mathematicians of his
day, precisely as it did in Gauss.
Cantor was the first to formulate a
theory known as the continuum
hypothesis. Despite Cantors repeated
promises to prove the continuum
hypothesis, he was never able to do
so. His inability to prove the
hypothesis caused him considerable
anxiety. Early in 1884 he thought he
had found a proof, but a few days
later he reversed himself completely
and thought he could actually
disprove the hypothesis. Finally he
realised that he had made absolutely
no progress. All the while he had to
endure mounting opposition and
threats from Kronecker, who said he
was preparing an article which would
show that the results of modern
function theory and set theory are of
no real significance. Such were the
circumstances surrounding Cantors
hospitalisation for what later proved
to be recurring cycles of manic
depression.
Cantors groundbreaking ideas
gained him numerous enemies. In
1908 Henri Poincare stated that
Cantors set theory would be
considered by future generations as
a disease from which one has
recovered. However, Kronecker
went so far as to attack Cantor
personally, calling him a scientific
charlatan, a renegade and a
corrupter of youth. Using his
prestige as a professor at the
University of Berlin, Kronecker did
all he could to suppress Cantors
ideas. He belittled those ideas in front
of his students and blocked Cantors
life ambition of gaining a position at
the prestigious University of Berlin.
Kronecker regarded Cantors theory
as a kind of mathematical madness,
and he attacked the theory and its
highly sensitive author with every
weapon that came to his hand.
Kronecker has been blamed severely
for Cantors tragedy.
Some greats such as Karl
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
Weierstrass and long-time friend
Richard Dedekind supported Cantors
ideas and condemned Kroneckers
actions. However, it was not enough.
Under the constant assault by
Kronecker, in addition to the absence
of well-deserved recognition for his
Cantor had to confront
strong opposition from
one of the most
eminent mathemati-
cians of his day
work and being stuck in a third-rate
institution, Cantor had his first
recorded attack of depression in 1884.
After he recovered he seemed less
confident and wrote: I dont know
when I shall return to the
continuation of my scientific work.
At the moment I can do absolutely
nothing with it, and limit myself to
the most necessary duty of my
lectures; how much happier I would
be to be scientifically active, if only I
had the necessary mental freshness.
Although he returned to mathematics
and attempted to work on the
continuum hypothesis again, his
attitudes had undergone substantial
alteration. He began to engage
himself with other interests. The
amount of time he devoted to various
literary and historical problems
steadily increased, and he read the
history and documents of the
Elizabethans with great attentiveness
in hopes of proving that Francis
Bacon was the true author of
Shakespeares plays. In the years
following his recovery, Cantor
complained that he lacked the energy
and interest to return to rigorous
mathematical thinking. He made his
last major contributions to set theory
in 1895 and 1897.
On December 16 1899, his
youngest son died suddenly. Cantor
had been to a lecture on the Bacon-
Shakespeare question in Leipzig, and
returned home in the evening to find
that the child had died in the
afternoon. It was a deep
disappointment to Cantor as well as a
shock. He described his son Rudolf
in a letter to the mathematician Felix
Klein a week later, and the tragedy
was born out in every word he wrote.
After his retirement in April 1913,
Cantor lived quietly at home. He had
been at Halle University for 44 years,
and he was remembered as a clear
and indeed inspiring teacher. The
hostile attitude of many
contemporaries severely aggravated
Cantors emotional ailments and
caused several nervous breakdowns.
The rest of his life was spent in and
out of mental institutions. He was
taken to the Nervenklinik, a mental
hospital in Halle, for the last time in
June 1917: he did not want to go, and
constantly wrote to his wife asking
her to come and take him home. He
died there of a heart attack on
January 6, 1918 at the age of 73.
Cantors theory finally began to
gain recognition by the turn of the
century. Today, it has penetrated into
almost every branch of mathematics,
and has led to many new questions
that should keep mathematicians
busy for centuries. Cantor would
probably not be surprised.
My theory stands as firm as a rock;
every arrow directed against it will
return quickly to its archer. How do I
know this? Because I have studied it
from all sides for many years;
because I have examined all
objections which have ever been
made against the infinite numbers;
and above all because I have
followed its roots, so to speak, to the
first infallible cause of all created
things.
Nasr Ahmed
Nasr Ahmed is studying for a PhD in
mathematical physics at the
University of Newcastle. His home
country is Egypt.
iSquared magazine 15
 Y oure sitting in a tiny seat, blocking out the
cries of a screaming three year old while
trying in vain to prevent the person next to
you from falling asleep on your shoulder. The only
movies available are either Ace Ventura Pet Detective in
Spanish or Die Hard with all bad language and violence
edited out for the special inflight edition. What will
you do to keep yourself amused? Youve got four hours
left, youve flicked through the duty free magazine
several times and, lets face it, Sudoku is getting pretty
damn boring.
Unfortunately many of the ways you might like to keep
yourself entertained on flights are illegal (such as using
your phone). However, as a scientist, you might start to
wonder about a fundamental question: how is the plane
youre in even staying in the air in the first place?
How planes fly has been a fascination of many children
and adults since planes were first put in the air. Some
people love flying. Some people have phobias of flying.
Some people remember their teachers at school telling
them all about how the curved shape of the wing enables
it to take off. Some people dont really care. But
whichever group youre in, the concept of flight has been
a fascinating hybrid of mathematics, engineering, politics,
marketing and above all, one big misconception.
In the 17th century, Daniel Bernoulli (one of a gifted
family of mathematicians) first laid some of the
foundations of fluid dynamics, an area that now
dominates huge parts of mathematics, aeronautics,
physics, chemistry and engineering. One day Bernoulli
thought up a clever theorem, while watching water pour
out of a bottle, and imaginatively named it Bernoullis
Theorem:

|u|2 + p = constant

The theory of flight

How do aeroplanes stay up? Ophir Samson
debunks some of the myths of air travel
16 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

Source: Wikimedia Commons
This theorem has been used ever since to provide
simplistic explanations of how planes fly as well as how
David Beckham can curve his free kicks. (Bernoulli
didnt know Beckham at the time, and Beckham probably
doesnt know much about Bernoulli either). In fact, when
Roberto Carlos curled his famous free kick for Brazil,
engineers and goalkeepers were dumbfounded by the
surprising results of aerodynamics.
Bernoullis explanation of how planes fly goes like
this:
Because the top of the wing is curved while the bottom is
flat, the air has to travel faster over the top than it does
over the bottom. Bernoullis theorem claims that if you
have fast moving air then you get low pressure, and vice
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
versa. So the pressure above the wing is low, while the
pressure below the wing is high. So you end up with high
pressure below the wing and low pressure above the wing.
This net pressure difference gives the lift.
Engineers were really smug with this explanation for
many years, thinking that theyd cracked it, until one day
a know-it-all asked so why can planes fly upside down?
After many umms and ahhhs they realised that while
scientists believed Bernoulli's argument, it is in fact a
very, very wrong explanation for why planes fly.
Interestingly, some early planes were even built on this
principle even though its wrong. It was clear that the
theory of aircraft flight had to be redesigned in a more
robust way before it could ever be safe to build the giant
jumbo jets we have today. So companies like Boeing and
Airbus dug up work that mathematicians named Von
Karman, Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin (which by the way
wasnt actually his real name) and Prandtl, amongst
others, did many years before you were eating airline
food consisting of a dodgy chicken curry and a bread roll
that went off in 1972.
So apart from planes being able to fly upside down,
what else is wrong with Bernoulli's argument? Firstly, the
argument implies that if you are an air particle that is
about to go above the wing, then you will speed up. But
who, or what, is telling you to speed up? You dont have
a little GPS telling you youre about to approach the top
curved part of a wing please speed up. Air particles
cant have any prior knowledge of the geometry of the
space in front of them. Also, if this argument was true,
then why not simply maximise the area of the upper
surface (as Einstein suggested once) to look like:
If Bernoullis traditional argument for lift
was correct, why not maximise the area
above the wing?
In fact the air does move faster over the top of the wing
than under it, but Bernoulli's argument does not provide a
satisfactory explanation for this.
Secondly, Bernoullis explanation is actually implicitly
stating that if two packets of air separate before the wing
(so that one goes above the wing and the other goes
below), then they must rejoin exactly after the wing. But
why should they join up again? In fact, the packet at the
iSquared magazine 17
top doesnt rejoin the
packet at the bottom.

Thirdly, the argument

claims that we first
have high velocity
above the wing. In
reality, Bernoullis
theorem actually The two packets at A are already out of sync at B, and do not join together
states that when there again at C. This is not what we would expect from Bernoullis explanation.
is high velocity then
there will be low
pressure, and vice versa: it does not say which will come It should be made clear that Bernoulli was not an idiot.
first. Bernoullis Theorem simply states that high velocity As he lived about three hundred years ago, he didnt
corresponds to, not causes, low pressure. know much about planes. The fallacy falls in the hands of
Next time youre on a flight, do the following back of the thousands of teachers that use Bernoullis theorem to
explain flight. Interestingly, the training manual of a
major airline company (which shall remain nameless)
The training manual of a major uses this incorrect explanation when teaching their trainee
airline company uses an incorrect pilots about how their planes fly! But clearly theres
another explanation for how planes work.
explanation of how planes fly
the napkin calculation. Assuming Bernoullis theorem
could actually provide all the lift, a Boeing 747-400 with
Vortices and tornados
an average speed of about 250ms-2 would produce a net Whenever an object moves through air (or any other fluid),
upward force of about 870,000 Newtons. As the plane vortices are created at the edges of that object. You can
weighs roughly 1,775,000 Newtons, this lift is about 48% think of vortices as points, or lines, in a fluid that make
of what is required to get you off the ground. the fluid rotate around them. For example, when water

A tornado has a line vortex at its centre

Source: National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)

18 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

flows out of your tap in the sink and into a drain, it swirls We can solve the integral to get
around the plughole. Tornados provide another example
of vortices. The wind rotates in a funnel shape around an
invisible vertical line in the centre of the tornado. Fy=U
You cant actually see the point in the plughole or the
line in the tornado around which the fluid swirls, but its where is the circulation of the trailing vortices and U is
still there. These invisible points
and lines are called point and Vortices are formed when fluid flows past an object..
line vortices, and they are also Here clouds form vortices around an island near Cuba..
formed when air flows past the
end of a wing (at the wingtip).
The presence of vortices
induces a circulation, denoted
by , which measures the
strength of these vortices a
huge, fast swirling tornado will

Source: http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq/archives/001854.html
have a larger circulation than a
small slow moving tornado.
Once a vortex has been created
at the wingtip, it moves off and
becomes a trailing vortex.

Around 1850, Helmholtz created

the fundamental laws of fluid
dynamics, called the Helmholtz
Laws. One of these laws states
that once a circulation has been
set up, it will be conserved.
Therefore, once a vortex has
been created at the wingtip, it will leave the wing and the air velocity. Hence, Fy will be positive (i.e. we get a
continue to drift off as a trailing vortex with the same net upwards force) whenever is negative. Therefore, the
circulation. This is conservation of vorticity. A sole purpose of many engineers is to design a wing that
circulation can either be positive or negative, depending will have a negative circulation.
on the direction in which the flow is swirling. To see how wings work, first imagine that the plane is
sitting stationary on the runway about to take off. As
initially it isnt moving, there is no vorticity and hence no
Some integration circulation. Next, imagine the plane begins to move and
so a trailing vortex is created at the wingtip. Now think of
So why do we care about Mr. Helmholtz? It turns out that a big circle enclosing both the wing and the trailing
integration and calculus werent just fancy concepts you vortex. We can split this big circle into two parts, one that
learned about to speak smugly at university interviews includes the whole wing (and none of the trailing vortex)
(and parties). A particularly intelligent guy called Blasius and one that includes the whole trailing vortex (and none
once came up with a neat theorem which gives the force of the wing). The total circulation is the sum of the two
on the wing as a function of air density and (roughly circulations around the wing and the trailing vortex. By
speaking) the geometry of the wing. More specifically, Helmholtz's conservation of vorticity, the total circulation
we have is conserved, and as initially the circulation was zero, it
will remain zero forever. Therefore the circulation around
the wing is equal and opposite to the circulation around
the trailing vortex.
Remember that we need a negative circulation around
the wing for a positive lift. Hence, we need to ensure that
the trailing vortex has a positive circulation. The wing is
where i=1,Fx is the horizontal force, Fy is the vertical curved at the top and flat at the bottom in order to deflect
force, is the density of the air and (z) is what is called air into a pattern that creates trailing vorticity with
a complex potential a function of complex variable z positive circulation.
that encodes many of the properties of the flow. The
integral here is taken around the surface of the wing. Lets digress for a moment to talk about Formula One

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 19

racing. There was a problem when Formula One racing
really took off that the cars would literally take off. The
cars drive at such high speeds that the whole car acts like
a wing. Looking at a formula one car from the side, the
underside is flat and the top of the car is essentially
curved. In the same way a wing experiences lift, so does
the car. Engineers therefore made spoilers and put them at
the back of the car.
Spoilers are simply wings that produce trailing
vortices with negative circulation, and so by the same
idea as described above, the wing itself will have equal
and oppose positive circulation. As the force on the wing
is Fy =i, a positive will mean that Fy is negative a optimising the shape of the wing
downwards force. This downwards force keeps the car on
the road.
Newton's third law and the
Coanda effect
Back to planes. Another important design feature of the
wing is that it carries air along the top of the wing and
throws it downwards. By Newtons third law, this
Vortices form at the tip of a wing
20 iSquared magazine
provides an equal and opposite upward force on the wing
which provides more lift for the wing.
The Coanda effect is a cool concept that youve
probably known about since you were a kid. Try taking a
drinking glass and hold it horizontally under a tap of
water: Youll notice that the water flows around the
surface of the cup, sticking to this surface as long as it
can before finally dripping off. Formally, the Coanda
effect is the tendency of fluid streamlines to attach to
Wing designers spend their life
convex surfaces (such as the outside of your drinking
glass). As the top of the wing is a curved, convex surface,
the Coanda effect ensures that nearby air is sucked
downwards to the wings surface. As a results, the wing is
also pulled upwards with an equal force (by Newtons
third law again) hence achieving more lift.
Only once the circulation property, Newtons third law
and the Coanda effect all work together will there be a
Image courtesy of NASA Langley Research Centre
Winter 2007/8
 So weve seen that a wings design must do a lot. It
needs to:

1. Generate trailing vortices with

positive circulation.
2. Deflect air downwards to make
use of Newtons Third Law.
3. Be curved to maximise the
Coanda Effect.
4. Minimise drag.

A wing designer at Boeing, for example, spends his or her

life optimising the shape of the wing so that the first three
points are maximised but the fourth is minimised. Of
course, aircraft designers have many other issues to
worry about (such as keeping engines quiet, fast,
Spoilers need to produce a downward lift to environmentally friendly and small). But the priority is to
keep the cars on the ground get the right amount of lift and reduce drag. So next time
youre on a long flight, keep yourself busy by reading
higher velocity above the wing than underneath it. Once this article over and over again. Hopefully itll keep the
this higher velocity is established, then we can invoke man in the next seat from falling asleep on your shoulder
Bernoulli's Theorem to conclude that the pressure below once more.
the wing is higher than above.
About the Author
Ophir Samson is currently at the Massachusetts
A day in the life of an Institute of Technology (MIT) solving problems in
aircraft designer fluid mechanics and nanotechnology using
techniques from complex analysis. He gained his
Fluid dynamicists care a lot about Reynolds numbers. A MSci in Pure Mathematics from Imperial College
Reynolds number (denoted by Re) describes the regime London and is now based there as a PhD student.
of fluid dynamics youre working in; for a very small In his spare time, Ophir works as a dance teacher
body, moving at low speeds in a sticky material (such as
and a close up magician.
honey) then the Reynolds number is small. Conversely, a
large body, moving at high speeds in an unsticky material
(such as air), will have a high Reynolds number. Planes
are very large bodies, flying at high speeds in very thin
(unsticky) air so the Reynolds number for aircraft flight is
very high (about Re = 5108). Nevertheless, planes are
big objects and so they encounter a lot of air friction, or
drag, which slows them down. The design of the wing
must therefore minimise the drag. The more drag a plane
experiences, the more thrust it needs to spend to achieve
the same speeds. The more thrust it needs, the more fuel
it needs, and then the cost of flying goes up.

FURTHER READING
Physical Properties of Winged Flight. Gale M. Craig, http://www.regenpress.com/
Stop Abusing Bernoulli! How Airplanes Really Fly. Gale M. Craig, Regenerative Press, 1998.
Vortex shedding of thin wings with time dependent camber functions. Ophir Samson, MSci Thesis,
Imperial College London, 2006.
Coanda Effect: Understanding How Things Work. Jef Raskin,
http://jef.raskincenter.org/published/coanda_effect.html

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 21

 book review
Is mathematics all in the mind?
The Mathematicians Brain:
A Personal Tour Through the
Essentials of Mathematics
and Some of the Great Minds
Behind Them
by David Ruelle
Princeton University Press
2007, 13.50 (Hardback)
There is a well-known story about
the French mathematician Henri
Poincar, which tells of his sudden
flash of inspiration as he boarded a
bus during a field trip. At the
moment when I put my foot on the
step, the idea came to me I did not
verify the idea; I should not have had
time but I felt a perfect certainty.
He had consciously laid to rest the
problem that he had been working on,
but somehow his brain hit upon the
answer at a moment when he was not
even thinking about mathematics.
Poincar and Jacques Hadamard
suggested that this phenomenon is
part of a four-step process of
mathematical invention: preparation,
incubation, illumination and
verification. During the preparation
stage the mathematician spends time
consciously working on a problem,
but failing to make progress,
abandons it. However, the
unconscious mind continues to look
for a solution, and after an incubation
period of weeks or months, the
solution suddenly becomes clear, at
an unexpected moment in time
(illumination). The final verification
stage involves checking that this
inspired solution is in fact correct.
The question of how the human
mind makes mathematical
discoveries is one of the themes
running through David Ruelles new
book, The Mathematicians Brain.
22 iSquared magazine
Ruelle delves into the philosophy of us in lengthy and repetitive tasks
mathematics, examining how such as carrying out calculations,
mathematics and the human brain are our superiority is crushing in the
connected. Has mathematics domain of mathematical creativity.
developed in a particular way that is While Ruelle concludes that artistic
due to the unique structure of the creativity and mathematical
brain, or does it exist independently creativity do not necessarily come
of human thought? The latter hand in hand, he asserts that good
viewpoint is known as mathematical mathematical ideas are selected on an
Platonism, in which the structures of aesthetic basis. Mathematical
mathematics can be seen aesthetics is, according to Ruelle,
metaphorically as statues. The culture dependent, so that
mathematician does not chisel [these mathematical good taste consists of
statues] out of a block of stone using intelligently the concepts and
according to some random fantasy, results available in the ambient
rather they belong to the world of mathematical culture for the solution
the Gods, and it is the of new problems.
mathematicians noble task to unveil So, it would seem that the
them and reveal them in their eternal landscape of mathematics is in many
beauty. Although Platonism appeals ways dependent on mathematicians.
Ruelle introduces us to some of the
The landscape of characters who have played key roles
in shaping this landscape. These
mathematics is include Kurt Gdel, who caused
outrage by showing that some
dependent on theorems can neither be proved nor
mathematicians disproved; Alexander Grothendieck,
who carried out important work on
to many mathematicians, Ruelle the underlying structures of
supports an alternative argument, that mathematics but later abandoned the
mathematical conceptsare a subject completely; and Nicolas
production of the human mind and Bourbaki, who wasnt actually a real
may reflect its idiosyncrasies. person but a pseudonym for a group
In order to investigate this theory, of young French mathematicians.
he outlines some of the key features In the course of his narrative,
of the human brain, drawing Ruelle reveals some of the benefits
comparisons with a computer. of being involved in mathematical
Among the advantages of the brain research. Mathematics, he says, is a
are its highly parallel architecture and discipline with great freedom, where
its well-developed visual and there are no restricted areas of secret
linguistic abilities, while the main doctrines. It is only while doing
disadvantages are the brains slow mathematical research that one truly
functioning and the lack of formal comes to see the beauty of
precision in human thinking. All of mathematics. What it is that makes
these aspects have some impact on mathematics beautiful? According to
the way that we do mathematics, and Ruelle, the beauty lies in
although a computer can outperform uncovering the hidden simplicity and
Winter 2007/8
complexity that coexist in the rigid
logical framework that the subject
imposes.
Despite himself being a
mathematical physicist, Ruelle
concentrates almost solely on pure
mathematics in this book. He goes
into detail on the axiomatic basis and accounts. Non-mathematicians
natural structures of mathematics,
and continues to come back to these
topics throughout. The first half, in distributed through every chapter, the
particular, is overly repetitive and
seems to lack direction. The strengths over-complicated and poorly
of this book lie in some of the later explained. For those who arent put
chapters (for example those that
discuss the human brain,
mathematical invention and aspects
of past and present mathematical
culture), as well as in Ruelles
OTHER RECENT RELEASES
Benjamin Franklins Numbers:
An Unsung Mathematical
Odyssey
by Paul C. Pasles
Princeton University Press
2007, 15.95 (Hardback)
Few American
lives have been as
celebrated or as
closely scrutinized
as that of Ben-
jamin Franklin. Yet
until now Frank-
lin's biographers
have downplayed his interest in
mathematics, at best portraying it
as the idle musings of a brilliant
and ever-restless mind. In
Benjamin Franklin's Numbers,
Paul Pasles reveals a side of the
iconic statesman, scientist, and
writer that few people know his
mathematical side. In fact, Frank-
lin indulged in many areas of
mathematics, including number
theory, geometry, statistics, and
economics. This book is the first
mathematical biography of Ben-
jamin Franklin.
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
accounts of fellow mathematicians
such as Alexander Grothendieck and
Alan Turing.
The Mathematicians Brain is at
times longwinded, but it does contain
some interesting philosophical
discussions and biographical
should beware, however. Although
mathematical material is not
mathematics that is included is often
off by a few equations and theorems,
this book will provide an intriguing
insight into how the minds of
mathematicians actually work.
Sarah Shepherd
The Tiger That Isnt: Seeing
Through a World of Numbers
by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot
Profile Books
2007, 12.99 (Paperback)
Numbers have be-
come the all-power-
ful language of
public argument.
Too often, that pow-
er is abused and
the numbers bam-
boozle. This book
shows how to see
straight through them and how
to seize the power for yourself.
Public spending, health risks, envi-
ronmental disasters, who is rich,
who is poor, Aids or war deaths,
pensions, teenage offenders, the
best and worst schools and hospi-
tals, immigration life comes in
numbers. The trick to seeing
through them is strikingly simple.
It is to apply something everyone
has the lessons of their own
experience. The authors of this
book created and present the
BBC Radio 4 series, More or Less.
A Certain Ambiguity:
A Mathematical Novel
by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal,
Princeton University Press
2007, 16.50 (Hardback)
While taking a
class on infinity at
Stanford in the
late 1980s, Ravi
Kapoor discovers
that he is confront-
ing the same
mathematical and
philosophical
dilemmas that his mathematician
grandfather had faced many
decades earlier and that had
landed him in jail. Charged under
an obscure blasphemy law in
1919, Vijay Sahni is challenged
by a skeptical judge to defend his
belief that the certainty of mathe-
matics can be extended to all
human knowledge including
religion. The stories of grandfa-
ther and grandson hinge on their
explorations of parallel develop-
ments in the study of geometry
and infinity.
iSquared magazine 23
Calculations,
Calculus and
Computing
Rebecca Morris looks at some of the
historical applications of mathematics
M aths plays a pivotal role in our everyday lives
each time you use a computer, listen to the
weather forecast, or use your credit card youre
making use of maths. In fact, it would be hard to find an
aspect of modern life that doesnt rely on maths in some
way! With this in mind, throughout the following article
we shall be exploring some mathematical history,
focusing on positional number systems, calculus and
computing, to see what influence these areas have had.
A natural place to begin is with our numerals
themselves. The familiar digits from 0 to 9 feature on
phones, keyboards, remote controls, alarm systems and
clocks, to name just a few examples, and they are as
natural to us as the letters of the alphabet. Our modern
positional number system in particular, where the value
of the numerals 0-9 depends on their position, becomes
second nature to us after a few lessons at primary school.
Take 333 as an example. We learn that each 3 in this
number has a different value, depending on its position:
the 3 on the right end of 333 has a value of 3 units, the 3
in the middle has a value of 3 tens, and the 3 on the left
has a value of 3 hundreds. We then learn the rules for
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and,
after a bit of practice, can calculate with easy efficiency
so long as the numbers arent too big (and were not
feeling too lazy!)
Although the number system we use today is inherited
from what are known as the Arabic Numerals, the
notation was actually invented by Indian mathematicians.
Prior to about AD600, when the Indians began using this
new notation, positional number systems werent in
24 iSquared magazine
common use. (Some ancient civilisations, most notably
the Babylonians and the Mayans, did use positional
systems, but unlike ours, which is based on multiples of
10, theirs were based on the numbers 60 and 20
respectively). Instead, systems where the value of a
numeral didnt depend on its position were much more
widespread, and Roman Numerals are an example of this;
each I in III, for instance, has the same value its
contribution to III does not depend on its placing.
Roman Numerals are still very much in use today. They
often feature in clocks, are used to denote chapters in
books, and are even used in the names of chemical
compounds, but have you ever tried calculating with
them? If you have, youll know that it isnt easy! The
rules for manipulation of Roman Numerals quickly
become complicated, so to cope with arithmetic the
Romans (and other civilisations that used non-positional
systems) relied on instruments like the abacus. However,
even with these devices, calculations with our modern
system are much simpler. In fact, there were often
competitions between those people skilled in the use of
the abacus and those using the positional number system
to see who could complete certain calculations the
quickest, and ultimately the victors were those using the
positional number system.
But how did the development and spread of the
positional number system affect people? Well, as we
have seen, it was certainly a lot easier to perform
calculations with the Arabic Numerals. This had great
implications for those involved in the transfer of goods or
money, since they no longer needed to refer to their abaci
Winter 2007/8
Calculus was developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (left) and Sir Isaac Newton (right) in the
second half of the seventeenth century. The question of who made the discovery first was the cause
of much intellectual controversy and a major quarrel between the two men.

and other such aids. However, it also had applications calculating the area under a graph, is essentially the
for fraudsters since it is very easy to alter written inverse operation of differentiation.
numerals. For example, just adding a 0 can turn 10 into The techniques of differentiation and integration had a
100, and therefore forged cheques are an example of how significant impact on physics in particular. As an
our modern positional number system can sometimes example, consider Newtons famous second law of
work to our disadvantage. There is no disputing the fact motion. This law states that the unbalanced force acting
that the Arabic Numerals and their modern descendant on an object is equal to the rate of change of momentum
have had great influence on people over the years the of that object, where momentum is defined to be the
fact that they are still so widespread today is testimony to
product of the mass and the velocity. To find the rate of
their power and application, both for good and for bad. change of momentum we differentiate the momentum (=
mass velocity). If we assume that the mass of the object
doesnt change with time (i.e. mass takes a constant
The power of calculus value), then differentiating momentum gives the mass
multiplied by the rate of change of velocity (which is
Having looked a little at our number system, we shall defined as the acceleration). Thus, by using
now touch on what is probably one of the most famous differentiation, we end up with the very succinct equation
developments in mathematics: calculus. This has F = ma, where F is the force in Newtons, m is the mass
applications in maths, physics, astronomy, finance, in kg and a is the acceleration in m/s2.
etcin fact its influence can be found almost everywhere. Quantities like displacement and velocity may depend
Calculus was developed independently by the great on only one variable, usually the variable of time, and
mathematicians Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm when we differentiate these to obtain velocity and
Leibnitz in the middle to late seventeenth century, and acceleration respectively, we are differentiating with
can be thought of as consisting of two (fundamentally respect to time. However, it is also possible to
related) parts: differentiation and integration. differentiate a function that depends on more than one
Differentiation is concerned with rates of change, while variable. If we differentiate with respect to one of the
integration, which is often introduced as a way of several variables on which our function depends, we have

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 25

 what is called a partial derivative. Partial derivatives were This means that if theres a particular problem or type of
important to the electromagnetic theory of James Clerk problem that we would like to solve, then provided that
Maxwell, a nineteenth century mathematician and we can come up with an algorithm for solving it that can
physicist, as they allowed him to formulate his important be fed into a computer, we can let the computer do the
electromagnetic field equations. This gives a hint of how irksome calculations and come up with the answer.
powerful calculus can be, and it gave scientists of the Algorithms can be used to solve all sorts of problems
time not just a wonderful tool with which to solve with industrial applications; from working out the
problems, but also a language with which to express shortest route from one town to another, to scheduling a
some fundamental results. large project so that it is finished in the quickest possible
More recently, and perhaps more surprisingly, the tools time. A famous example that can be solved by an
of calculus have been used to help identify and catch algorithm is the route inspection or Chinese postman
criminals. How? By being used in whats called image problem. This is concerned with finding the shortest route
enhancement. For example, suppose someone witnessed a for a postman who needs to deliver letters to all of the
hit and run accident and managed to take a photo of the streets in his round, starting and finishing at the postal
car on their mobile phone as it sped away. Chances are, office. If the number of streets in the route is relatively
the photo wouldnt give enough detail to allow the police small, then it might be plausible to examine each possible
to read the number plate or identify any other route by hand and pick the shortest, but when there are
distinguishing features. But, with the help of calculus and more than a handful of streets which the postman has to
other mathematical techniques, it is possible to enlarge visit, things get complicated and having an algorithm and
the photo without distorting it so that such features computer available can save a lot of time and effort.
become visible. The way to solve problems such as that of the Chinese
Normally, when you try to enlarge a digital photo, it postman is to come up with a mathematical model of the
becomes grainy or fuzzy because there isnt enough situation. In this case, the mathematical model will just
information in the image. However, using calculus and be a graph; that is, a set of edges and vertices (points)
other mathematical tools, mathematicians can begin to where each edge represents a road and each vertex
accurately fill in the missing information to reveal represents the end of a road. The edges are given weights
important features in the photograph that
werent initially fully captured by it, such
as the full number plate of the car, thereby
helping the police to identify the driver.

Chinese postmen
Another recent influential development in
maths which was to have applications
almost everywhere was that of the
computer, and a very important notion for
computers is that of the algorithm.
Roughly, an algorithm is a set of
completely unambiguous instructions that
are to be carried out in a finite amount of
time. There are every day informal
examples of these all around us; from the
lather, rinse and repeat if desired found
on shampoo bottles, to the rules we follow
to perform arithmetic tasks. Although the
concept of an algorithm is probably
intuitively very familiar, it wasnt until the
early twentieth century that a precise
definition was given.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The reason that algorithms are so

important in computing is that they tell the
computer exactly what to do, and dont
require it to think about what it is doing
the computer just carries out the What is the shortest route that visits all
particular task as dictated by the algorithm. the streets on the postmans round?

26 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

 North Street North Street (20 mins)

s )
in
d m
0
oa (1
R ad

West Street (10 mins)

East Street (15 mins)

o
ew R
N ew
West Street

East Street
N

s )
in Ro
m
5 se
Ro (1 Ro
et
et

se re ad
re

Ro St (1
St

k e 0
ad La m
ke

in
La

s )

South Street (25 mins)

South Street
to represent the length of each road, or the time taken for
the postman to walk along it. The diagram above left
shows roads around the post office (the red square). The
diagram above right is a graph depicting the roads in the
diagram on the left.
By considering the degree or valency of each vertex
(that is, the number of edges coming into and going out
of the vertex in question) and, in particular, the number of
vertices of odd degree, it is possible to work out whether
the postman will need to walk along the same street twice.
In fact, if all the vertices are of even degree then the
postman wont have to walk along any road more than
once. If there are some vertices of odd degree (and it can
be proved that if there are any, then there will be an even
number of them) then at least one road will have to be
traversed twice.
If there are any so called odd vertices, then we will
need to pair them off and find the shortest route between
each pair; it is these edges that will need to be repeated.
Once weve done this, we just need to find a route that
passes through each of the edges and repeats those found
by pairing the odd vertices. Then well have solved the
Chinese postman problem!
There are, however, some similar problems for which
efficient algorithms have yet to be found. One famous
example is the travelling salesman problem, where a
salesman starts off from his home town and has to visit
each of a number of other towns before returning home.
The problem is to find the shortest route that achieves this.
Despite extensive research by mathematicians over the
last 50 years, the travelling salesman problem remains
unsolved. So, although the development of algorithms
and computers has had great influence on industry, there
are still plenty of areas that would benefit from further
investigation.
There can be no disputing the fact that mathematics has
had an enormous influence on people throughout the
years. The history of maths is full of examples of how it
has been applied for our benefit and to our detriment, and
there is little doubt that it will continue to help shape our
lives!
About the Author
Rebecca Morris is a third
year maths and philosophy
student at St Hildas
College, Oxford. She is
originally from Deal in
South-East Kent. Her
mathematical interests
include logic and the
history of mathematics.

FURTHER READING
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. Charles Seife, Penguin, 2000.
Advanced Physics. Keith Gibbs, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
The Numbers Behind Numb3rs: Solving Crime with Mathematics. Keith Devlin and Gary Lorden,
Plume Books, 2007.
Decision Mathematics 1. John Hebborn, Heinemann Educational Publishers, 2002.

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 27

 Mathematics
Extracts from a new mathematical poetry
collection by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
TWO CULTURES
Graves claimed there isnt
much money in poetry:
and none vice-versa.
The first part stays true
if we replace poetry
by mathematics.
Algebra of verse
lays down rules for pantoums and
tests for sestinas:
but where are the books
explaining the poetry
of computation?
Poets show, dont tell:
build metaphors from concrete
and specific bricks.
In mathematics,
abstract and general is
our bread and butter.
28 iSquared magazine
COMPUTING ERRORS
Digital alarm 2000
If you feared millennial emergencies
or supposed that rows of zeros were important
then you gave too much significance to fingers.
Octal anniversaries that might have been,
were the norm two less, have all gone by unmarked:
if two more, the first four-figure years would dawn
as Dr Halley hunts for comets in the Greenwich skies
and hums unpublished firework tunes by Mr Handel.
Ill conditioning
Catastrophists see
a drought switched to a monsoon
by butterfly wings.
One decimal place
of doubt spreads till an answer
goes utterly wrong.
Limited precision
Near-parallel lines,
drawn with thick pencil, will cross.
But where? Exactly.
Explanation: Our answers may only be as precise
as the data we start with. (Much even hinges on the
simple fact that we have ten fingers.) Tiny errors
can get magnified during a calculation until there
is no accuracy in the final result. Think about the
meeting of two nearly parallel lines. A small shift in
one of them can move the crossing point a long way.
Winter 2007/8
s and Poetry
CONSTRAINTS
Equalities Barrier

To walk a tightrope You hit it, running.

is hard. So how much harder The dry-stone wall deflects you
to walk several. down its stubborn length

Spiders manage it till the hillside tilt

spinning sticky contour plots releases you or else a
which arent safety nets. second obstacle,

Explanation: Optimisation calculates best
strategies for planning and control
problems. Its algorithms look for the lowest
points in numerical landscapes of cost or
loss. But the terrain containing an optimal
solution is often complicated by paths we
must stick to and obstacles to avoid. Both
may thwart our instincts about where to go.
lurking in a dip,
destroys more hope of getting
where you want to be.
Uneasy Relations by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
is published by Hearing Eye. It can be ordered for
3 (+ 0.50 postage & packaging) from Hearing
Eye Publications, Box 1, 99 Torriano Avenue,
London, England NW5 2RX

Profile
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs was born in Essex and grew up in Surrey and Middlesex. A youthful
aptitude for sums and symbolic manipulation caused him to be channeled through school and
university into a career as a research mathematician in the
aircraft industry and in higher education. In the late 1980s he
began writing poetry and has subsequently had four poetry
chapbooks published. Some of the haiku-like pieces in his
new collection, Uneasy Relations, appeared first in his
undergraduate textbook Nonlinear Optimisation with
Financial Applications (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004)
where they were used as fillers for what would otherwise
have been mere white space. The challenge of making
mathematical ideas accessible to non-mathematical readers
became increasingly addictive and eventually there were
enough poems for a small collection.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs was born in Essex and grew up in Surrey and Middlesex. iSquared
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk A youthfulmagazine
aptitude for29
sums and s
manipulation caused him to be channeled through school and university into a career as a research mathematician in the ai
and in higher education. In the late 1980s he began writing poetry and has subsequently had four poetry chapbooks publ
 interview

Bridging the gap:

maths in medicine
Roman Hovorka is a Cambridge mathematician who has
developed a pioneering artificial pancreas which could
dramatically improve the lives of diabetes sufferers. Here he
explains how he uses mathematics in his medical research, and
reveals his inspirations and ambitions for the future.

Did you always enjoy maths?
Yes, from about the age of 10. Maths was natural to me,
and it gave me an edge over my mates I was always
quite competitive.
What did you want to be when you were a child?
As a child, I was not sure what I wanted to do and went
from the street sweeper to the prime minister we moved from the theory to the practice. However,
ambition and back. Later, in my teenage years, the books
I was reading opened my mind, and I realised that it was
important for me to contribute to the progress of science
in some form or other. I have to admit that I was rather
overambitious when young.
What did you study at university?
I moved from a smallish town to study in the city of
Prague, at the prestigious Mathematics and Physics
Faculty of Charles University. I read informatics, which
was a new subject at the time, and basically covered the
theoretical foundations of computation. This was a five
year course. The first two years were shared among all
mathematics courses. We received good foundations in
logic, analysis, algebra, statistics etc. I found myself to be
motivated by practical applications of mathematics and
the early use of computers was very appealing to me.
This was reflected in my grades in subsequent years when
intellectually and in terms of life-long research
motivation, grammar school did more for me than
university. I did not particularly enjoy my university
years.
What was your first job?
This came through my project supervisor, who over and
above his maths appointment at the University held a
part-time position at the Department of Internal Medicine,
University Hospital, Prague. I took a position as a
research associate at the hospital. Being the only

30 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

 Over the years, I realised that
these activities provided
excellent foundations for my
subsequent research. I was
privileged to have had
inspiring colleagues with
medical problems which
needed to be solved. I liked the
challenge.

How did you end up working

on diabetes?
I got into diabetes with my first
job. I worked at the Metabolic
Intensive Care Unit where my
clinical colleagues looked after
poorly controlled people with
diabetes who needed their
insulin treatment to be sorted
out. I was interested in
developing a decision support
system, which uses glucose
measurements to suggest the
appropriate insulin treatment.
At the unit, we also owned a
unique and pioneering device,
the Biostator the zero
generation artificial pancreas.
I was intrigued by the
interaction of several
subsystems, housed in a single
unit, which was adored by the
clinicians. I realised that
technology with solid maths
foundations can improve the
life of people with diabetes.

What are you working on

now?
My present work focuses on
developing the artificial
pancreas, which combines a
continuous glucose sensor
inserted under the skin, a
pager-sized unit containing a
non-medic in the department, I was challenged by the control algorithm, and an insulin pump. This device is
need to establish a meaningful communication channel capable of revolutionising the treatment of people with
with my clinical colleagues. I did all possible jobs from type 1 diabetes. These people need better means to
database design to mathematical modelling of metabolic control their disease before a cure (in the form of stem
processes, statistics consulting to experimental design. cells) becomes available. We are working with kids and

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 31

 interview
Continued from previous page
adolescents, doing experimental work but also
developing a so-called in silico simulation environment,
where we can simulate clinical trials before we do them
for real. This area of predictive biosimulation is very
active and offers drastic acceleration of the research into
medical devices and new medicines alike.
I also participate in an EU-funded consortium
developing closed-loop glucose control for critically ill
patients at intensive care units. Our research is going
really well. The glucose controller that I have developed
is being commercialised by a major medical-devices
company. My research group has also developed in silico
models of critically ill patients. We can test different
insulin-treatment algorithms on our synthetic patient in a
fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of clinical
tests, and without the safety implications that there would
be for real patients.
How realistic are your mathematical models? What
can you learn from them?
All models are wrong (at least in my field). It has been
said, and I concur, that defining what the model should
do is half of the solution. Thus, I stay very focused when
developing models for a particular application.
Developing a general model that can describe all
aspects of, say, carbohydrate metabolism is not possible.
Not at the moment. We are a long way behind physics,
where relatively simple models can be used for a wide
range of purposes. The models I develop help to find out
how sensitive various body tissues are to insulin, how
much insulin the body produces, what different glucose
Profile
Roman Hovorka was born in the Czech Republic
in 1960. He studied at Charles University in Prague
before accepting a research position at Pragues
University Hospital. He is now the head of the
Diabetes Modelling Group at the University of
Cambridge. His work involves mathematical
modelling of metabolic diseases, in particular
diabetes. Currently his research group is develop-
ing and testing a prototype of an artificial pancreas,
which is intended as a treatment for type 1 diabetes.
32 iSquared magazine
fluxes affect blood sugar concentration, etc. The models
help to diagnose defects in carbohydrate metabolism, and
they are used inside decision-support systems for
treatment of diabetes and related metabolic diseases.
How has mathematics been used in the development
of the artificial pancreas?
The maths comes out in several areas. The glucose
controller employs a predictive model, which is used to
make predictions about what happens to blood sugar for
different insulin infusions. This mathematical model,
Developing a general model that
can describe all aspects of, say,
carbohydrate metabolism is not
possible at the moment
basically a set of differential equations solved in closed-
form in a novel way, is the core of the system. It needs to
be relatively simple as it will run on a low-spec hand-
held device in real time. To arrive at this model, we
simplified our more complex models while retaining the
main features. It can be adapted to the individual patient
using a variation of the Kalman filter which is currently
being patented. We also developed an in silico simulation
environment, which includes a model of the patients, the
sensor, and the pump. The patient model is complex,
with time-variant model parameters to describe as
realistically as possible the blood glucose variations
during the day and night.
How would an artificial pancreas improve the lives of
diabetes sufferers?
The artificial pancreas will reduce extreme glucose levels.
Both too low and too high glucose levels are bad. The
former may lead to loss of consciousness and possibly
coma. Over a long time, the latter leads to diabetes
complications such as blindness, limb amputations and
kidney problems. The artificial pancreas will provide a
more physiological insulin delivery than is possible with
existing treatment modalities. Imagine a sailboat on the
sea. If you use an analogy of the state-of-art diabetes
treatment, you preset the tiller and the sails and let the
sailboat go. If the wind does not change and the
underwater current does not change, then the sailboat
Winter 2007/8
will get to the desired target. If there is a change, you solutions. Nowadays, I try to forget about it. If a solution
may go aground. With the artificial pancreas, the tiller exists, it will come to my mind without conscious effort.
and the sails are frequently set according to the prevailing The brain works miraculously. Of course it helps to have
wind and the stream. No big deal except that you need a ready arsenal that the brain can use. I am always trying
a foolproof system. to expand my knowledge.

Describe your typical working day. What inspires your work?

I am not sure I have a typical day. Occasionally I work at The greatest inspiration comes from my teenage years.
home or travel to Europe or the US. I live at St Albans Following my romantic scientific hero, Arrowsmith
and if I go to Cambridge I get into the office at about (from the book of that name by Sinclair Lewis), I would
9am or 9.30am. I try to use my time as effectively as also like to leave a mark on the scientific landscape. Day-
possible. I always have a paper, a review and a project to-day inspiration comes from working with my
grant on the go and the first thing I do in the morning is colleagues, who present problems I would like to solve. I
to progress these a bit. Then come the phone calls to sort enjoy being creative and finding new solutions. Our
out management issues. Email communication takes artificial pancreas work has been publicised by the
quite a bit of time. Lunch is with my group, when we media. The encouraging letters I receive from people
touch base and possibly continue after lunch to address with diabetes and their carers are extremely motivating.
additional issues. In the afternoon, I might have a
meeting or two with my clinical colleagues. Late What do you like most about your job?
afternoon is a rush to catch up on writing documents I Meeting people, finding solutions, publishing papers (this
did not manage to complete in the morning. I may have a usually means the job is done).
conference call with my colleagues in the US, which can
be a pain due to the time difference. I try to get home and what do you least like?
before 8pm to see my daughter before she goes to bed. The paperwork.
To bed before 12pm is my aim but I rarely succeed.
During the day I may need to arrange my travels, What is your greatest achievement?
Having three healthy children.
The encouraging letters I receive How do you relax?
from people with diabetes and their Sport I love skiing but substitute with indoor climbing
carers are extremely motivating during the year. I have to admit that relaxation is not my
strength.

although now I have a secretary who can help. On
average I travel 3-4 times a month although there are
busy times such as one week next month when I am in
Berlin on Monday and Tuesday, in Glasgow on
Wednesday and in Athens on Friday and Saturday. The
scientific life is very international, and the work I do on
the artificial pancreas takes me often to the US. I rather
struggle with the jet-lag.
My creative work is squeezed into moments of
tranquillity such as in the evening or in the airport lounge.
I used to like time in the plane there are no
interruptions.
What do you do if you get really stuck on a problem?
I used to spend lots of time trying to find alternative
If you could change one thing about the world, what
would it be?
Make everybody happy.
Whats on your to-do list for the future?
Just one item: to make the artificial pancreas reality. In
the short term, I need to finish this interview by today, an
invited paper by Wednesday (not yet started), a draft
grant application by the end of September, a major
document to the regulatory body by the end of November,
two posters by early October, hire a study clinician asap,
review two papers (one overdue), sign a collaboration
agreement before the end of September and go to the
bed before midnight. Failed again.
Interview by Sarah Shepherd

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 33

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34 iSquared magazine mathematics beyond the imaginary
Winter 2007/8
"
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Left: Killer Sudoku

in 80 days
Around the world
Right puzzle:
all fears
The sum of
Left puzzle:
Mathabus

Samurai Sudoku
Above:

Below: Futoshiki
Above: Kakuro

Solutions to puzzles on pages 36-39:

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 35

puzzles
Samurai sudoku

8 3 1 2 8
2 3 5 7 1
4 9 8 5 4
6 7
2 5 8 4 1 3 6 8 7
3 1 1
5 6 9 3 6
2 3 6 4 2 5
4 4
6 5
8 5
8 4 9
3 9
6 6 9 6 4
7 3 1
1 8 4 5 7 2 3
9 2 2 1 3 7
2 1 6 8 9 6
5 8 8 5 1
2 9 7 3 7 6
1 4 6 9 4
How to Play

Samurai is a puzzle made up of five interlinked sudoku grids. Each of these 9x9 grids must be
completed as in normal sudoku, so that every row, column and 3x3 square contains each of the
numbers from 1 to 9.

Solution on page 35.

Puzzle supplied by Clarity Media.

36 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

 Futoshiki
How to Play

Fill in the empty squares so

that each row and each
column contain all the
numbers from 1 to 7, with no
repeats. The marked
inequalities between adjacent
squares must also be
satisfied.

Solution on page 35.

Puzzle supplied by
Clarity Media.

Killer Sudoku
How to Play

As for regular sudoku, fill in

the grid so that every row,
column and 3x3 group of
cells contain the numbers 1
to 9. However, the numbers
in the cells enclosed within
each cage (dotted lines
denote cages) must add up
to the total given for that
cage. No cage can contain
the same number twice.

Solution on page 35.

Puzzle supplied by
Clarity Media.

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 37

puzzles
21 8 22
Kakuro
6
11 12 17 14
How to Play
16 24 17
11 11
The aim of Kakuro is to fill in the white
11 30
squares with numbers between 1 and 9,
in such a way that the numbers in each
horizontal and vertical grouping add up to
15 4
the totals given in the grey squares. A
24 6 19 15
number in the bottom half of a grey box
10 6
gives the total for the vertical line of
squares below that box, while a number
9 17
in the top half of a grey box gives the
14 19
total for the horizontal line of squares to
13 23
the right of the box. No digit may appear
19 10
more than once within each horizontal or
16 11
vertical grouping. For example, for two
16 4 4 12 squares with total 4, the white squares
18 10 could contain 1 and 3 but not 2 and 2.
11
8 6 9 Solution on page 35.

21 Puzzle supplied by Clarity Media.

Solution to last issues Prize Crossword.

9
Congratulations to Alan Gall who won a copy of

84
the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics.

6
C A N T O R F T L A E
Y R H A R M O N I C F

2
C Z E R O A R G F
L N E C A U C H Y O
I S F T S T R

5137
C T G P O L A R W A T T
A I C L O A
Q U A N T U M T R I V I A L
D S T D E N
V A L U E M O D E L P D E
E C R R E N
R S T O K E S U S T
T I N I H A L F I
E T O P O L O G Y E T
X I N T N P A R I T Y

38 iSquared magazine Winter 2007/8

 Mathabus is a new type of puzzle invented by Daniel Fretwell, an undergraduate at the
University of Sheffield. The puzzles are similar to rebus puzzles, but use mathematical
notation instead of pictures.
Identify the films represented in the following mathabus puzzles:

Two men are travelling around a large

spherical object of radius approximately
6378.1 km. They are travelling with average
speed 20.8722834 km hr-1. Assuming the
journey follows a perfect sphere, find the time
taken to complete this journey and hence
describe it.

For hints see bottom of page. Solutions are on page 35.

Your feedback on iSquared magazine

is welcome. If you have any comments
or suggestions, please email
editor@isquaredmagazine.co.uk.

For information about the magazine

and to order copies of current and
back issues, visit our website:
www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk
Right puzzle: Thats a big radius. What spherical object do you know thats roughly that big?
Left puzzle: Another word for phobia maybe?
Mathabus hints

www.isquaredmagazine.co.uk iSquared magazine 39

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