Laura J. Snyder

My review of David Berlinski’s The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements will be in this weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. Just in time for the Oscars, there’s even a movie tie-in:

“One of the more curious historical revelations of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is that America’s 16th president was obsessed by a Greek mathematician from the fourth century B.C. While traveling from town to town as a young lawyer riding the Eighth Circuit in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln kept a copy of Euclid’s geometrical treatise, “The Elements,” in his saddlebag; his law partner Billy Herndon related that at night Lincoln would lie on the floor reading it by lamplight. Lincoln said he was moved to study Euclid by his desire to understand what a “demonstration” was, and how it differed from any other kind of argument.”

The entire review can be read here.

My picks for holiday books about science appeared in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. You can see which 2012 releases I suggest for gift giving here.

In honor of the day set aside to remember Ada Lovelace, friend and collaborator of Charles Babbage (and a major player in one chapter of The Philosophical Breakfast Club), I’m passing along two links: one serious, one a bit silly, but both apropos of Lovelace and her accomplishments.

First, the serious. A recent study by Yale University found that women in science are still discriminated against in classrooms and laboratories. How sad that perceptions of women’s abilities have not changed as much as we would like to think from Lovelace’s times in the 19th century. On this day we should remember that although women have come a long way since the 1800s, there is still much work to be done.

Next, the silly (but wonderfully so): a post on the relation between Ada Lovelace and her female friend and mentor, Mary Somerville by the talented Sydney Padua—who is writing a steampunk comic about Lovelace and Babbage.

Food for thought on Lovelace day.