Nat Friedman (1938-2020)

Mathematician and sculptor Nat Friedman died on May 2, 2020, at the age of 82. He played a seminal role in bringing together and calling attention to a vibrant community of mathematicians who created artworks and artists inspired by mathematical ideas. Tributes to Nat Friedman.

Nat Friedman at the 2007 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans. He was fascinated by knots, minimal surfaces (and soap films), and Möbius strips and delighted in demonstrating his ideas and discoveries.

I first encountered Nat in 1992 when he invited me to present a plenary talk at a meeting devoted to mathematics and art that he had organized at the University at Albany-State University of New York. My invitation to this pathbreaking conference came about because of articles I had written for Science News magazine highlighting the increasing use of visualization in mathematics.

One important element of that revolution was the burgeoning role of computer graphics in illuminating and exploring mathematical ideas, from soap-film surfaces, fractals, and knots to chaos, hyperbolic space, and topological transformations. One of my articles had focused on Helaman Ferguson, a sculptor and mathematician who not only worked with computers but also carved marble and molded bronze into graceful, sensuous, mathematically inspired artworks.

Nat's lively gathering, the first of a series of art-math conferences that he organized and hosted, introduced me to many more people fascinated by interactions between art and mathematics. Nat was instrumental in broadening my appreciation of the processes of creativity, invention, and discovery intrinsic to both mathematical research and artistic endeavor.

My meeting report for Science News (June 20, 1992): "Forging Links Between Mathematics and Art."

Nat founded The International Society of the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture (ISAMA) in 1998 to help further interdisciplinary education relating the arts, mathematics, and architecture.

Nat Friedman at his exhibit at the 2009 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, D.C. He was dedicated to the idea of getting children to see the world in the way a sculptor would as well as the way a mathematician would.

I wrote about some of Nat's ideas in my book Fragments of Infinity: A Kaleidoscope of Math and Art (Wiley, 2001). See "Points of View."

For examples of Nat's artworks, see "Knot Shadow," "Spiral Moebius," and "Fractal Torso."