#ghhardy — Public Fediverse posts

@paysmaths @Theoremoftheday

In his essay ‘The Phenomenology of Mathematical Beauty’, Gian-Carlo Rota said Morley's theorem was surprising but not beautiful. (He was arguing against the claim that beauty depended on unexpectedness, which was how he (perhaps not quite accurately) interpreted G.H. Hardy.)

But every other aesthetic judgement of Morley's theorem that I know of says that it is beautiful:

• ‘[in] a beauty contest involving geometrical theorems [...] one of the chief contenders would be Morley’s Triangle Theorem’ — Bankoff
• ‘[a] gorgeous result’ — Chamberland
• ‘startling, difficult to prove, and utterly beautiful’ — Dunham
• ‘Morley's beautiful theorem’ — Gardner
• ‘absolutely stunning and beautiful’ — Hofstadter
• ‘for sheer beauty it has few rivals’ — Oakley & Baker

(I agree that it is a beautiful result.)

#MathematicalBeauty #aesthetics #GHHardy