Mathematicians love their chalkboards, which they often use as their favorite working tools to write down and share their ideas. While their abstraction and complexity often make them hard to decipher, mathematical symbols and equations scribbled on a dark board make for beautiful objects. Jessica Wynne, associate professor of photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, has captured all their beauty in a series of photographs that she took while visiting mathematics institutes across Europe and America over the past three years.

A book gathering a collection of some of her most poignant photographs has recently been published by Princeton University Press. Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards features young as well as established mathematicians, some of whom are related to IHES: Alain Connes, Leon Motchane Chair, Misha Gromov, professor emeritus, Ofer Gabber, CNRS research director at IHES, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, former director (1994-2013) and current Nicolaas H. Kuiper Chair, Hélène Esnault, member of the Institute’s scientific council, John Terilla, member of the board of directors of Friends of IHES.

IHES and Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) are organizing a joint event around the book, in the presence of the author, Jessica Wynne, and of the mathematician Amie Wilkinson, a regular visiting researcher at IHP and a former visiting professor at IHES, whose work is portrayed in the book.

The event will take place
on Monday, September 13, at 5:30pm,
at Institut Henri Poincaré, amphithéâtre Hermite, 11 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005 Paris.

https://www.ihes.fr/en/do-not-erase-book-event/