Taxicab Numbers Every positive integer was one of his personal friends. — G.H. Hardy In 1913, a mathematical prodigy from India, named Srinivasa Ramanujan, started to mail formulae and conjectures to British mathematicians. Ramanujan had largely self-taught himself numbers, as he surpassed all possible educational opportunities at a young age. By 11, two university students who …
The Wallace Line & Biogeography When the age of exploration yielded to a period not simply of unlocking new areas of the globe, but of serious, timely examinations of those areas, the study of Earth’s biology began in earnest. In the middle of the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus noticed patterns in the similarities and differences …
The A.T. In October 1921, a forester and conservationist named Benton MacKaye, who taught at Harvard and worked for the U.S. Forest Service, wrote a seminal article in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects. Titled An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning, the piece kicked off a decades-long project to create the world’s premier …
No Mow May Few things have obtained the hegemony in the American landscape as that of the short, manicured lawn. Aesthetic edges and flat seas of green can appeal to our sense of geometry and order. But these yards are a relatively modern invention. Humans transitioned from natural spaces to gardens and grasslands for livestock …
Black Robins In 1976, conservationist Don Merton disembarked from a boat in tempestuous seas and ascended 600 feet up a rock stack known as Little Mangere Island. This spit is a tiny member of the Chatham Islands, which rest 400 miles east of New Zealand’s South Island. Little Mangere covers just 37 acres, a mere blip …
An Entire Species in Two Buckets [The naturalist] looks upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters which go to make one of the volumes of our earth’s history; and, as a few lost letters may make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of the numerous forms of life which …
The Frog Romeo This handsome fella is Romeo: Romeo – photo by Matias Careaga His bio features the following info: Height: 0′ 2″ Build: Stocky Status: Never married Children: No Want children?: Definitely Location: Bolivia Smoker?: No way Drinker?: Moderately For fun I like to: Leg days at the gym If you’re part of the …
The Many Flavors of the Moon The dominant body of our solar system is, of course, the life-giving sun. And, though we can observe other stars and planets in the night sky, the second-most prominent entity is easily the moon. Today, we denote a year by the time it takes to orbit our star, but …
Sierra Madre Writer, director, and actor John Huston created some of the most famous pieces in film history. A few of his standouts include The Maltese Falcon, the Asphalt Junge, The African Queen, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Three of those four partnered Huston with screen legend Humphrey Bogart, including 1948’s Treasure, considered one of the greatest adventure films …
Mojave Max Many Americans are familiar with Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog of Pennsylvania, and a slew of other weather-predicting rodents, including Buckeye Chuck, Wiarton Willie, Dunkirk Dave, and Staten Island Chuck. We rouse these groundhogs from hibernation on February 2 for the purpose of telling us the future of the struggle between winter and spring. …