MSRI Journal

From 1998 to 2004, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, California, hosted selected science journalists for a semester each in its Journalist in Residence program. The effort's aim was to build contacts between mathematicians and journalists to help improve the communication of mathematics to the general public.

Thanks to this program, I was able to spend the summer of 1999 at MSRI. By that time, I had spent nearly 18 years as a reporter, writer, and editor at Science News magazine and was eager to learn more about the inner workings of the mathematical community.

Established in 1982, MSRI is an independent organization on the extended campus of the University of California, Berleley. It functions as a meeting place for mathematicians from all over the world. This highly interactive marketplace of ideas reinforces the impression that mathematical research is far more a communal enterprise than a solitary pursuit.

Each year, the institute hosts a variety of conferences and workshops. It also features several mathematics research programs devoted to selected topics, each lasting a semester or a year, that bring together mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and other researchers. The program just ending when I arrived in June 1999 was devoted to random matrices and their applications.

One important component of MSRI's efforts involves communicating mathematics to the general public. When Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 1993, MSRI promptly organized a highly successful Fermat Fest, held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, to explore issues and ideas crucial to the theorem and its proof.

In February 1999, the institute hosted a multimedia program featuring playwright Tom Stoppard, who discussed mathematical concepts in his play Arcadia with Robert Osserman (1926-2011), then MSRI special projects director.

In October 1998, MSRI organized a three-day workshop on "Mathematics and the Media," which brought together a diverse group of mathematicians and science journalists. Meeting discussions vividly illustrated the difficulties involved in translating interesting mathematical research into terms understandable and meaningful to reporters and the general public. Mathematicians gained a better appreciation of the obstacles and deadlines that journalists face in writing their articles, and journalists obtained glimpses of some cutting-edge mathematics.

I have long argued that mathematicians ought to make a greater effort to communicate their ideas and research effectively not only to the general public but also to their own mathematical colleagues and to scientists and engineers. I have attended far too many mathematics lectures where even mathematicians quickly lose the talk's thread and begin to nod off, and I have glanced at too many research papers that fail to explain why a given topic is worth pursuing or to put the material in a broader context.

In a 1991 essay, I wrote "Research worth publishing should also be worth communicating. There is room in the mathematical literature for at least a small concession to a nonmathematical audience that may actually find the work of interest. And if mathematics is more than just a private game . . . then mathematicians must take some responsibility for communicating their ideas in ways that convey the meaning of their work to broader audiences."

MSRI's journalist-in-residence program represented one effort to improve communication of mathematics.

"The recent history of mathematics overflows with remarkable stories of mathematical accomplishments that have never been told, largely because mathematicians have never mastered the art of telling them and because the press and the public have never been invited in to know the enchantment of mathematics," Hugo Rossi stated in MSRI's announcement of its journalist-in-residence program. "MSRI is well-situated to lead the way in breaking these patterns, both in the public's perception of mathematics and in the mathematician's ability to engage the public."

Originally posted June 14, 1999.

The Mark of Zeta
The Return of Zeta
Solitaire-y Sequences
A Song About Pi
Row Your Boat
Juggling By Design
Averting Instant Insanity
Matrices, Circles, and Eigenthings
Lunar Shadows
MSRI Reflections