Expert: James Gort - 1/8/2007

Question
hi! i love the fact that the world is mathamatical. i would like a tatto or tattos of mathamatical concept(s) that show startling and brilliant ideas of eternity, space, time, etc. the best i have come up with so far is the fournier transform. being a classical trained opera singer, sound concepts also appeal to me. I appreciate you taking the time to read this and I greatly look forward to your response. Thank you very much.

Answer
Hi Sarah,

I've given this considerable thought.  Since mathematical concepts are usually expressed in the form of equations, I've concentrated on equations that present a very profound concept using only a few terms (to keep it simple for a tattoo).  Of course, some concepts can also be presented pictorially, such as Ptolemy's "epicycles", and that would look pretty cool, but it's not really accurate and would not be considered profound today.

In my short list of four, I think the top contender is "Euler's Equation".  This equation has been called one of the most beautiful equations of all time, and Richard Feynman (1965 Nobel Laureate and one of the most brilliant minds of our time) kept this equation in his notebook since he was a teenager.  The equation has profound implications to geometry and circular motion, including the motion of planetary bodies.  I think this is particularly relevant to you, since Johannes Kepler (who formulated the planetary laws of motion) was intrigued with what he called the "music of the spheres".  So indirectly, this equation plays beautiful music!  I can't really use superscripts and Greek letters in this response, but search for Euler's Equation.  It is " e (raised to the i x pi power) + 1 = 0 ".  In this equation, i = square root of -1.

Next in my list is "Hubble's Law", which defines the expanding universe.  It is " v = H(subscript zero) x d ", where H (subscript zero) is Hubble's constant.  It says that the farther distance (d) you see into the universe, the higher is the velocity (v) that galaxies are receding from you.

Next is the time-independent Schrodinger's equation.  This is simply H psi = E psi, where psi = Greek letter indicating the "wave function" of a state in the universe, H = the Hamiltonian for the state, and E = the state's energy.  This little equation defines the time-independent quantum mechanical behavior of any state in the universe.

Finally, I like Heisenberg's uncertainly principle, expressed as delta x  delta p >= h / 4 pi, where x = position of a particle, p = momentum of a particle, and h = Planck's constant.  This equation says that it's impossible to know BOTH the position and momentum of a particle with infinite accuracy.   

I hope these are helpful for your purpose.  If you do searches on these, you may come up with a more pictorial representation.  But the equations are beautiful in themselves!  Good luck.

Prof. James Gort