London’s Science Museum gives math a makeover
The Winton Gallery hopes to show how mathematics ‘underpins’ almost everything
LONDON— I’m going to admit something I probably shouldn’t. I’m so bad at math that, after a year of private tuition following a depressingly low mark in my first significant math exam, I actually went down a grade.
For me, math lessons were painful, as I’m sure they were for my teachers. For this reason, I approached the Science Museum’s new mathematics exhibition with trepidation. I needn’t have worried. To start with, Mathematics: The Winton Gallery was designed by architect Zaha Hadid, who died unexpectedly in 2016. It was to be the first permanent museum exhibition designed by Hadid and it will now be her only one.
The first thing I notice as I enter the vast exhibition space is the biplane suspended from the ceiling. Surrounding it is a swirling, billowing sculpture representing the flow of air around it.
The aircraft is the Handley Page Gugnunc, and when it was built in 1929, the aviation industry was the biggest employer of mathematicians.
The mathematics-based aerodynamic research used to design it led to a shift in opinion regarding the safety of flying, securing the future of the aviation industry. It’s a fitting focal point for an exhibition designed to demonstrate (without dusty exhibits or brain-frying formulas) how mathematics permeates our entire world.
“Our aim was to demonstrate how math underpins absolutely everything,” explains Dr. David Rooney, the exhibition’s curator, who believed a minimalist approach was key.
The museum’s original mathematics exhibition contained 600 items, but the new one contains just 120.
“The worst thing we could do would be to cram it with objects, and make the subject seem even more overwhelming,” Rooney explains.
The objects aren’t arranged according to traditional mathematics subjects, such as trigonometry. Instead, individual collections focus on the areas of life most affected by mathematics.
“For example, we’ve got a model of the Globtik Tokyo oil tanker, once the largest tanker in the world,” Rooney reveals.
Mathematics was used to design the shape of the hull, which in turn reduced drag and allowed goods to be moved around the world in less time, for less money.
“And globalization is reliant on low shipping costs,” Rooney says. “That model is a great example of how politics and power are tied to mathematics.”
In one section, there’s a tray of shiny glass eyes used by mathematician Sir Francis Galton to develop his theories relating to eugenics, and a cabinet filled with tissue samples from the lungs of South African asbestos miners.
These samples, collected by pathologist Chris Wagner, are an example of how the statistical study of probability can be used to predict the likelihood of harm.
In the “Form and Beauty” section, there’s a replica of a 1920s chair designed according to the Modulor system of proportions used by French architect Le Corbusier, and elsewhere, an architectonic sector used by mathematical instrument maker George Adams in 1770. It was used to produce scale measurements for architectural features such as columns.
iPad-wielding teenagers will surely struggle to appreciate the amount of time and effort required to produce figures a computer or smartphone can conjure up in a matter of seconds.
There’s also the complicated difference engine, invented by mathematician Charles Babbage, designed to calculate mathematical tables.
As I leave, kids are taking selfies in front of the airplane, while nearby, a young girl is staring at the difference engine with a mixture of wonderment and disbelief.
Mathematics: The Winton Gallery is a fantastic tribute not just to the museum’s curators, but to the late, great Hadid.
“She was an Iraqi-born female architect who studied mathematics, and who changed the world with her designs,” Rooney says.
“That’s a story which is just as inspiring as stories about brilliant mathematicians like Isaac Newton — but it’s also a reminder that mathematicians aren’t all old, white men.”
This is precisely the reason for the inclusion of interviews with a range of mathematicians, including Anne-Marie Imafidon, whose pre-record- ed interview about encryption can be found next to the exhibition’s Enigma machine.
“Mathematics is relevant to everybody, and nobody should feel excluded,” Rooney says.
The biggest proof of the exhibition’s success?
The fact that this math exam-flunking writer is already planning her return visit. Tamara Hinson is a U.K-based writer. Her trip was sponsored by the Science Museum, which didn’t review or approve this story.