A Mathematical ‘Fever Dream’ Hits the Road

Ingrid Daubechies, a mathematician at Duke University, is an expert on many matters, not least the baking of cookies in the shape of pi, the mathematical constant that equals the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, or roughly 3.14159. A sugar cookie recipe works fine, Dr. Daubechies says. But she prefers a savory version with cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano) and herbs (thyme and marjoram).

In the summer of 2023, Dr. Daubechies made a pi-shaped cookie cutter that tiles the plane: In principle, when this shape cuts cookies from a large sheet of dough, it generates absolutely no wasteful scraps from one cookie to the next, row upon row upon row. (The reality of crumbs makes it hard to execute this ideal perfectly, Dr. Daubechies noted.)

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Dr. Daubechies plans to bake pi cookies to celebrate Pi Day, which is this Friday, March 14 — 3/14. That day is also the International Day of Mathematics; the theme in 2025 is mathematics, art and creativity.

For the occasion, this year Dr. Daubechies is visiting the University of Quebec in Montreal, where she will offer special tours of “Mathemalchemy,” a traveling multimedia math-meets-art installation that has been her constant passion (some might say obsession) for the last five years. She will also give a public talk on “Mathematics to the Rescue of Art Curators.”

The exhibition — a 360-degree diorama of sorts, 20 feet long, 10 feet wide and nine and a half feet high — was created in collaboration with Dominique Ehrmann, a fiber sculptor from Quebec, and a team of 24 artistic mathematicians and mathematical artists. It debuted in 2022 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and has made several stops since.