A loving, applied mathematical tribute across a generation

L. Mahadevan, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in physics for studying how sheets get wrinkled, wrote a loving tribute, a few months ago, to his teacher Joseph Keller [pictured here]. Keller is a two-time Ig Nobel Prize winner. The entire essay appears in SIAM News. Here are snippets: Joe Keller’s contributions to the […]

Teapot effect update

It was back in 2009 when professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck of the University of East Anglia, England, and Belgium, acquired the Ig Nobel prize for physics – for calculating how to make a teapot spout that does not drip. Coincidentally (or not, as the case may be), in that very same year the teapot spout drip […]

Philpott’s teapot

I have news for Simon Hoggart (March 8). There is a teapot orbiting the sun. It’s in my kitchen cupboard. Dr David Philpott London —letter in The Guardian, March 10, 2008 [NOTE: the notion of the orbiting teapot may have originated with Bertrand Russell. See pages 547-8 of volume 11 of the book The Collected […]