Mathematics and Beauty

Does beauty have a mathematical foundation? If so, can machines learn to identify it? Mina Teicher, professor of mathematics and neural computation at Bar-Ilan University, traces the mathematics behind beauty from the Golden Age in Spain to the 21st century, from the essence of visual experience to machine “vision,” in order to explore what beauty means to mathematicians today.

With 140 scientific papers in mathematics, complex systems, neuroscience, bio-medicine, computer vision, and cryptography, Professor Teicher has research interests spanning computational neuroscience, algebraic geometry, and applications to computer vision, braid group and its applications to cryptography, and mathematics education. She is the former vice president for research and development of Bar-Ilan University, and currently sits on national and international boards, and consults on technology transfer and innovation policies to governments.