Esther I. Brown
dynamic, detail-oriented creativeC-VILLE Issue #18.18
Issue #18.18 :: 05/02/2006 – 05/08/2006
UVA
New faculty tomes hit the shelf
Math and poetry for your summertime reading
O.K., it’s nearly summertime, but that doesn’t mean you should let your brain rot for three months. Keep the academic vibe alive by digging into these books from UVA faculty, ready just in time for the dog days.
—Esther Brown
James Joseph Sylvester: Jewish Mathematician in a Victorian World
By Karen Hunger Parshall
Want to learn some new things about numbers without actually having do any math yourself? If so, UVA mathematics professor Karen Parshall has written a book for you: the first biography of James Joseph Sylvester, a Jewish mathematician who taught at UVA (as well as at Johns Hopkins University).
Scar Tissue
By Charles Wright
Here’s something for poetry lovers to get excited about: Charles Wright, one of UVA’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poets and professor of creative writing, will be releasing a new collection that will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in July. For a sneak preview, enjoy these lines from the title poem, “Scar Tissue II”:
Hard to imagine that no one counts,
that only things endure.
Unlike the seasons, our shirts don’t shed,
Whatever we see does not see us,
however hard we look,
The rain in its silver earrings
against the oak trunks,
The rain in its second skin.
