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CNN Live At Daybreak

Look at Professor Dave Bayer, Other Mathematician Behind 'A Beautiful Mind'

Aired March 26, 2002 - 05:50   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And we leave you this hour with an intimate look at a beautiful mind, the real thing.

Our Beth Nissen profiles mathematics Professor Dave Bayer.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Oscar-winning film, "A Beautiful Mind," is based on the life of a real mathematician, John Nash. But there is another real mathematician behind the film. He was a consultant to check the math in the movie, and his hands were used in several scenes to write out complex equations.

He is Dave Bayer, a professor of mathematics at Barnard College in New York City. The story of this real mathematician has nothing to do with mad genius or schizophrenia, but it could still be titled, "A Beautiful Mind." What's on the chalkboard is evidence of how his mind works. How Bayer says human minds have worked since early man invented the wheel.

DAVE BAYER, MATH PROFESSOR: There is no distinction for me between mathematics done on a blackboard now and somebody staring at a shape and saying, "Well if it was a little rounder, it would roll better." And that's mathematics. I mean, mathematics shapes our identity as people.

NISSEN: That may be hard to prove to all those people who hit the wall in math comprehension some time after Algebra. For most people in the world, higher mathematics is complex, confusing, confounding.

BAYER: I mean, it happened to me too. When I first had trigonometry, it was like, "What is this?"

NISSEN: But Bayer worked through all the hard angles, reached a higher plane where mathematics is an art form, classic, elegant.

BAYER: Mathematicians have a vision of how they like to see things. In artists it's the same thing. I mean, a painter has a particular vision that they're fulfilling.

NISSEN (on camera): But instead of paints you use? BAYER: Symbols.

NISSEN (voice-over): Just as many people say they can't understand modern art, many can't understand this chalk mural. Ask, and Bayer will tell you the center panel depicts the relationships between sisergies (ph) and graph colorings, using cellular resolutions and hyper plane arrangements -- right. The other two panels have to do with how to represent mathematically the shape of things: a ball, a doughnut, a universe.

BAYER: What does the universe look like? You know, does it just keep going in all directions? Part of what I'm interested in is representations, computer algorithms for manipulating descriptions of possible shapes of space.

NISSEN: While most people think of mathematicians working at chalkboards -- when they think of mathematicians at all -- this is the truer picture. Bayer does most of his work on computer.

BAYER: And so in some sense, all of mathematics is being reinvented so we can understand how to do it on the computer.

NISSEN: Computers may help with some of the great unsolved mathematics problems. Problems that have puzzled the keenest minds for decades, for centuries. Yet each new generation of mathematicians, including Bayer's, keeps seeking answers.

BAYER: It's like searching a woods and people just span out. And somebody is lucky and tries the right thing. You spend part of your time working on things you know you can do, and you spend part of your time working on things you should know you can't do.

NISSEN: Yet know you must try to do anyway, to advance human knowledge, to elevate civilization, because that is what the mind is for at its beautiful best.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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