top of page
ALL POSTS


An Ascending Arc: The Educator’s Journey of Mathematician Lovenia Deconge Watson
In one sense, the story of Lovenia Deconge Watson (b. 1933) is the story of thousands of bright young Black women, born in the South in...

Dale DeBakcsy
Mar 26
Â
Â


Achtung, Brainy: Grace Lindsay and the Mathematical Modeling of the Human Brain.
You are placed in front of a screen that is black save for one spot of red in the center, and are told to focus strictly and solely upon...

Dale DeBakcsy
Jan 25
Â
Â


The Modern Amphitrite: The Many Nautical Revolutions of Janet Taylor.
The nineteenth century saw Great Britain expanding vociferously into new markets, extending its influence, for better or worse, into...

Dale DeBakcsy
May 13, 2024
Â
Â


It Came from Teichmüller Space! The All-Too-Brief Mathematical Adventures of Maryam Mirzakhani
A square, who works as a lawyer in the two-dimensional world of Flatland, sits down with his hexagonal grandson: Taking nine squares,...

Dale DeBakcsy
May 3, 2024
Â
Â


Primal Screams: Sophie Germain’s Mathematical Labours
It is a well-known fact of humanity that the chances of a group of people electing to do something decent and necessary is inversely...

Dale DeBakcsy
Apr 6, 2024
Â
Â


Jeanne Altmann, Baboon Moms, and the Justice League of Primatology.
It is a long standing saying* that the pantheon of primatology is essentially the Justice League of America, with Jane Goodall as...

Dale DeBakcsy
Mar 18, 2024
Â
Â


Sofia Kovalevskaya: Love Makes all the Partial Difference
Everybody needs love, but for some the striving after it so dominates their every action and decision that it becomes impossible to ever...

Dale DeBakcsy
Jan 15, 2024
Â
Â


Mary Somerville: British Mathematical Prometheus
In the 1750s, when France was foundering scientifically in the Cartesian shallows, it took Émilie du Châtelet’s French translation of...

Dale DeBakcsy
Dec 26, 2023
Â
Â


Casualty of Genius: The Sacrifice of Mileva Marić-Einstein.
Content Note: By the end of this article, you are not going to like Albert Einstein much. If this is a problem for you, if part of your...

Dale DeBakcsy
Dec 19, 2023
Â
Â


Sex, Cards and Calculus: A Day with Émilie du Châtelet
In popular mythology, the 1687 publication of Newton’s Principia was the culminating moment when one human told the world how the...

Dale DeBakcsy
Dec 13, 2023
Â
Â


Ada Lovelace and the Curious Practice of Programming for Non-Existent Computers
What did Ada Lovelace do? She is one of the most fetishized scientists today - at conventions when I'm taking sketch commissions she...

Dale DeBakcsy
Dec 10, 2023
Â
Â


Grace Hopper and the Democratization of Computer Programming
In a room across the hall from where I teach, a group of a dozen kids between the ages of nine and thirteen are learning how to program...

Dale DeBakcsy
Dec 9, 2023
Â
Â


Julia Robinson and the Cracking of Hilbert’s Tenth Problem
For mathematicians, the only thing more exciting than proving a theorem is proving that it can never be proven. These anti-proofs, if you...

Dale DeBakcsy
Nov 8, 2023
Â
Â


The Algebraist of Baghdad: Sutayta Al’ Mahamali’s Medieval Mathematics.
It is a thousand years ago. Europe is a stumbling, superstition-addled giant, depleting its energies on visions of holy violence and...

Dale DeBakcsy
Nov 2, 2023
Â
Â


The Billion Roads from Here to There: The Graph Theory Combinatorics of Fan Chung
‘Well, some go this way, some go that way. But as for me, myself, personally, I prefer the short-cut.’ – The Cheshire Cat Every morning...

Dale DeBakcsy
Oct 9, 2023
Â
Â


Breaking Neutral: The Population Genetics of Tomoko Ohta
We are all mutants, our genes loaded with the steadily acquired variations of three billion years that gradually changed a collection of...

Dale DeBakcsy
Sep 7, 2023
Â
Â


A History of Women in Mathematics Gets Release Date!
Mark your calendars! The third book in my Trailblazers of Women in STEM series for Pen & Sword Books, A History of Women in Mathematics,...

Dale DeBakcsy
Jul 21, 2023
Â
Â


Genius Overcome: The Destruction of Catherine de Parthenay.
The life of Catherine de Parthenay (1554–1631) was dominated by national religious conflict and her decision to take a pivotal role of...

Dale DeBakcsy
Jun 27, 2023
Â
Â


Hypatia of Alexandria: Philosopher, Mathematician, Political Casualty.
By 400 CE, Alexandria was submerged in a sea of political-religious rivalries that drew even the most innocuous seeming of scholars into...

Dale DeBakcsy
Jun 23, 2023
Â
Â


Biplanes, Airships, and Submarines: A Talk with Dr. Nina Baker About the Legacy of Hilda Lyon.
One of the great things about writing this column is the fact that, from time to time, I get to talk with remarkable people about other...

Dale DeBakcsy
May 31, 2023
Â
Â
bottom of page


