TECHNICAL NOTE: The great majority of the links below are to
scanned antique books at the Internet Archive, most of them
anthologies. Poems frequently run for several pages; when coming
to the apparent end of a poem, turn the page to make sure!
General/Elementary ---
Advanced Mathematics ---
Geometry ---
People
---
Back to Main Subject Index
- MATHEMATICS: General and Elementary
An arithmetic joke. Would be funnier if it scanned.
Anonymous:
There was an old man who said, Do
Anonymous:
There was an old man who said, "Gee!"
Bailey, Philip James:
The Age A sort of Platonic dialogue about literature
and everything under the sun, written in iambic couplets. The
worldly, comedic mood is not at all typical of Bailey.
Some mathematical passages include:
The speaker
here is a poet who dislikes science for the usual
reasons. The other characters then dispute his position, but soon
(as usual throughout) wander off-topic.
'Tis not the dull, dry calculated facts The poet-character
resumes his attack: "Do asymptotes assist the soul's
salvation? // Are cube roots paradisal vegetation?"
Equation ... for a literary critic, that vile creature.
Pegasus, fleeter than telegram
This would be a fine comic maths poem, but unfortunately includes
a now-unacceptable rhyme for "figures".
Baker, Karle Wilson:
The Fractions Came Down
Sennacherib parody from an Alice in Wonderland knock-off.
The Fractions are beer-swilling Prussian-like
invaders who sit around multiplication tables.
Binyon, Laurence:
Numbers ... are independent of the universe.
Browning, Robert:
Abt Vogler
"After he has been extemporising upon the musical instrument of his
invention." Very complex meditation on creativity, with mathematical
imagery (and embedded mathematical verse structures) drawn from music
theory and Pythagorean
philosophy.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:
A Mathematical Problem The teen-aged Coleridge turns a geometry problem into doggerel:
"I may justly plume myself, that I first have drawn the nymph
Mathesis from the visionary caves of abstracted Idea, and caused her to unite with
Harmony."
Darley, George:
A Poetical Problem A pilgrim asks a flower how many drops of dew
adorn her; the "pouting Flower" peevishly answers by setting an arithmetic
problem in rhyme.
Gillies, Capt. Robert C.:
Love Mathematical He was constant
but arbitrary, she was independent
and variable, will they ever integrate? You get the idea.
Guiterman, Arthur:
Logic A joke.
Guiterman, Arthur:
A Pure Mathematician A bit stereotypical.
Housman, A. E.:
When First My Way to Fair I Took
Time, like mathematics, cannot be altered.
Kipling, Rudyard:
Arithmetic on the Frontier
Highly educated officers also die in battle.
Murray, R. F. ("A St. Andrews Man"):
The Delights of Mathematics
did not exactly overwhelm this "bejant" (first-year University student).
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Orthodox?
From the longer poem "Raban". Uses a mathematical metaphor for theology.
Stephen, James Kenneth:
Ode on the 450th Anniversary Celebration at Eton
With attempted arithmetic jokes.
MATHEMATICS: Geometry:
- Bates, Arlo:
A mathematical maiden named Chaucer
- Burgess, Clinton Brooks:
Mrs. Isoceles Tri
- Burgess, Clinton Brooks:
Rev. Rectangular Square
- Burgess, Gelett:
Remarkable,
Truly, is Art
- Chesterton, G. K.:
The Higher Mathematics
Obscure (possibly anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist) satire, with references
to non-Euclidean geometry.
- Davidson, John:
Snow
Looking at ice crystals under the microscope inspires
the poet to consider how infinite complexity can arise from
simple geometry.
- Deutsch, Babette:
The Fourth Dimension:
Just a metaphor,
like "romantic triangle", but indicative of how
the idea of higher dimensions made inroads into
the general imagination.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Circles
Emerson was fascinated by circles.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Uriel
Circles are superior to lines.
- Foley, J. W.:
Scientific Proof
Actually more "mathematical proof". Although not terribly funny, it
contains
some nice phrases (e.g. "the real square root of North")
and is a memento of the several centuries when polar exploration
was closely linked to mathematical astronomy.
- Lindsay, Vachel:
Euclid
Similar to Whitman's "Learn'd Astronomer".
[Emily Ezust's Lieder Page]
-
Musical setting by Jake Heggie
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth:
Charade (Cambridge) About the Pons Asinorum of Euclidean
geometry.
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur ("Q"):
A New Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens
Famous mathematical parody.
Tabb, John Bannister:
A Problem in Mathematics
Either a shallow joke or extremely profound. [Unfortunately the only
online copy has typographical errors, even in the author's name.]
MATHEMATICS: Advanced
- Child, J. M.:
The Cal-Dif-Fluk Saga A pseudo-epic about the invention of calculus.
- Forbes, George:
Lament of the Twenty-One Coefficients
Unfortunately, we are unable to find the full text of this
humourous poem, described in
Science 7, No. 152, p.9 [1886].
- Guiterman, Arthur:
Rudyard Kipling
Not quite the image of Kipling
most people have:
"I will chant in Lowland Dutch / Of Quaternions
and such, / And the boundless Fourth Dimension shall delight
to honour ME!"
- Howells, William Dean:
Statistics
The concluding stanza (turn the page!) includes the "gyre" theory of
progress best known from Yeats. Illustrations by Howard Pyle.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
(Cat's) Cradle Song, by a Babe in Knots
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund
- Rankine, W.J.M.: The Mathematician in Love
Complete with equations.
- Robb, A. A.
The Revolution of the Corpuscle
Cavendish Laboratory party song (to the tune of "The Interfering Parrot",
from The Geisha, a Mikado imitation by Sidney Jones).
- Sill, Edward Rowland:
The Clocks of Gnoster-Town
A rather heavy-handed satire, with some technological imagery
and references to statistics.
- Sill, Edward Rowland:
The Links of Chance
An early (and subtle) exploration of the "butterfly effect".
- Sylvester, J. J.:
To a Missing Member of a Family Group of Terms in an Algebraical Formula
The inclusion of this poem in a long technical lecture was a bit odd even by
Victorian standards, but no-one ever accused Sylvester of being an ordinary
academic.
SCIENTISTS: Mathematicians
- Lord Byron:
Don Juan, Canto XIII, 87 Features a brief appearance by "Angle,
the soi-disant mathematician", thought by some critics to
be Charles Babbage.
- Forster, Thomas:
Philosophical Breakfast Song
"Come hasten to
breakfast at Trinity College // For Herschel and Forster and
Babbage and all // Are bringing their porridge //
Their wit and their knowledge // From each learned college //
And each learned hall."
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
To The Memory Of Fourier
... who accomplished so much in his short life.
- Eliza Hamilton:
To W[illiam] R[owan] H[amilton]
- Sir John Herschel:
On a Scene in Ely Cathedral.
Written after praying there with Hamilton.
- Aubrey De Vere:
To Professor Hamilton
De Vere, a moderately distinguished poet, was one of Hamilton's best friends all his life.
- Aubrey De Vere:
To W. R. H.
- Aubrey De Vere:
In Memory Of Sir William Rowan Hamilton
- Aubrey De Vere:
Friend Of Past Years
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
On The Death Of Professor [James] MacCullagh
The Irish mathematical physicist who invented the "curl" operation in vector calculus. He committed
suicide, horrifying his colleagues. Hamilton, who battled suicidal impulses
himself, was particularly distressed.
- Arnold, Edwin:
Florence Nightingale
who is finally gaining some recognition as a statistician.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
Benjamin Peirce: Astronomer, Mathematician
A dominant figure in American science for much of the 1800s,
Peirce is better known today as the father of the logician Charles Peirce.
