How maths helped identify fake paintings and other matters 

Du Sautoy tells us that Macbeth has a numerical structure based on prime numbers and that the number of words in key scenes is a prime number. This rhythm contributes to the unsettling atmosphere of the play. | Photo Credit: ISTB

The American Martin Gardner inspired generations of professionals as well as students like me, who saw that the subject was fun and enjoyed his books on mathematical puzzles. ‘Fun’ is not an aspect emphasised in our schools; the result is generations who might have enjoyed the subject being turned away for life. 

I love the popular maths books of George Gamow, and in later years, Ian Stewart, Simon Singh, Paul Hoffman, John Allen Paulos, and the wonderful Marcus du Sautoy, the Oxford professor for the Public Understanding of Science (it is likely that if an Indian university created such a post, its holder would quickly find himself in jail). Du Sautoy has written about the limits to science (What We Cannot Know), the art of the shortcut (Thinking Better), prime numbers (The Music of the Primes), the maths behind games (Around the World in 80 Games), books that I reread often. 

“My big thesis,” du Sautoy once said, “is that although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are.” 

Eight decades ago, G.H. Hardy wrote in his classic A Mathematician’s Apology, “ A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.” Du Sautoy credits Hardy with stirring his interest in maths in his recent book, Blue Prints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity. 

He paints a large canvas, with scientists, architects, musicians, artists, choreographers, writers all of whom use mathematics – consciously or otherwise – in their work. Blueprints are the fundamental mathematical structures that underpin human creativity, he says, and goes on to discuss nine such blueprints from primes to randomness. Leonardo da Vinci, Jackson Pollock, Borges, Escher, Bowie are only a few of the non-mathematicians who appear as we discover patterns in unexpected places. Hardy wrote, “the mathematician’s patterns must be beautiful…beauty is the first test, there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.” You can see that here. 

Du Sautoy tells us that Macbeth has a numerical structure based on prime numbers and that the number of words in key scenes is a prime number. This rhythm contributes to the unsettling atmosphere of the play. Mozart’s The Magic Flute, says du Sautoy, is  ‘dripping with maths’. The abstract works of Jackson Pollock which gave the impression of paint thrown recklessly onto a canvas had a deliberate structure too. Pollock always insisted he there was no accident in his work. He painted fractals, geometric patterns that repeat arbitrarily. Interestingly, when some canvases supposedly by Pollock were discovered after his death, they were shown to be fakes because they were not fractals. 

As students, we are told of the separation between the arts and the sciences; we often carry that idea into adult life. Mathematics, says Marcus du Sautoy, is the bridge that connects this cultural divide. 

Published - June 08, 2025 12:39 pm IST