Scientific American - USA (2019-12)

8 Scientific American, December 2019

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nate all gun show events and mail­order
purchase of weaponry and related materi­
als. And fourth, eliminate shipment of
weapons and related materials by com­
mon carrier across state lines.
All these steps are much cheaper than
the proposed $50 million, which would just
be used to study the matter ad infinitum.
Jim Wright via e-mail

POETRY IN NUMBERS

Steve Mirsky concludes “Do the Math”

[Anti Gravity], his piece about the relation

between physics and mathematics, by

quoting Robert Frost’s poem asserting that

“the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”

When I get to the next world, I expect to

see Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton sit­

ting in the middle of a grove of apple trees,

arguing about whether the mathematics

of physics is primarily geometric or analyt­

ic. If anyone knows, they should. (My wife

and I agree, for once: it is geometric.)

David J. Miller Emeritus professor of

physics, University College London

The universe doesn’t just speak “to us in
numbers,” as Mirsky quotes from physics
historian Graham Farmelo’s similarly en­
titled book. It speaks to us in mathematics
quite removed from numbers.
Further, the article cites a New York
Times obituary describing British mathe­
matician Michael Atiyah as having “united
mathematics and physics ... in a way not
seen since the days of Isaac Newton.” But
he simply understood both. The obituary
ignored such people as German mathema­
tician David Hilbert and French mathema­
tician Henri Poincaré, who were at home
in both camps long after Newton.
Seymour J. Metz via e-mail

CLARIFICATION

“Eye of the Flycatcher,” by Jim Daley [Ad­

vances], describes a novel retinal structure

that researchers found in the eye of the

Acadian flycatcher. The same study had

found the structure in the eye of the least

flycatcher as well.

ERRATUM

“Divide or Conquer,” by Mark Fischetti,

should have defined a coastline’s foot of

slope as the maximum change in gradient

rather than the maximum steepness.

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