#blackboards

For the last year, Jessica Wynne, a photographer and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, has been photographing mathematicians’ blackboards, finding art in the swirling gangs of symbols sketched in the heat of imagination, argument and speculation. “Do Not Erase,” a collection of these images, will be published by Princeton University Press in the fall of 2020.

“A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns,” the British mathematician G.H. Hardy wrote in 1940. Ms. Wynne was drawn to math through her summer neighbors on Cape Cod, Amie Wilkinson and Benson Farb, who both teach at the University of Chicago. She began photographing their blackboards and felt an artistic kinship.

These are great:

From: Michael, G. W. (George Washington). G.W. Michael's system of rapid writing : as illustrated on blackboards by the author in his teaching. Oberlin, Ohio : G.W. Michael & Co., c1884

The State Forest Service was issuing various warnings to trampers and cigarette smokers during the 1940s, particularly in newspapers for 1948. This may be the approximate date of this poster, which appears to have been prepared especially for school children.

New Zealand. State Forest Service :The ABC of forest fire prevention. Always Be Careful! / State Forest Service, Soil Conservation Council. [1940s?]