Mathematical Digest
Short Summaries of Articles about Mathematics
in the Popular Press"Out of the fold": Interview with Erik Demaine. Interviewed by Steve Nadis. New Scientist, 18 January 2003, pages40-43. This question-and-answer format interview tells the story of Erik Demaine, whoreceived a PhD at age 20 and went on to become the youngest professor ever atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led an unconventional life,having left school at the age of seven and spending the following five yearstraveling with his father. Today, Demaine's interests include origami andcomputational geometry. "I've been working on my favorite problem for the pastfive years, which is a long time for me," he says in the interview. "It has todo with a centuries-old question: what three-dimensional shapes can you make bysuccessively folding a flat sheet?" --- Allyn Jackson |
