September 30, 2009

Many Davidson students have attended Emeritus Professor J.B. Stroud's presentations on math in the work of artist Crockett Johnson, titled "Barnaby and the Purple Heptagon."  Now "Harold and the Purple Heptagon" is the title of the cover article in this month's Math Horizons magazine.  The Math Horizons article by Stephanie Cawthorne and Judy Green stems from collaborative research by Stroud, Green and Uta Merzbach in preparation for a 1980 exhibition of Johnson's artwork at the Smithsonian Institution.  In fact, the framed poster just outside Dr. Neidinger's office is a memento of this exhibition, donated by Stroud.  Dr. Stroud published the related article "Crockett Johnson's Geometric Paintings" in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, June 2008. 

Crockett Johnson was an artist, children's book author/illustrator, and amateur mathematician.  References in the titles and cover refer to Harold and the Purple Crayon, a children's book by Johnson; Barnaby, Johnson's comic strip featuring a character closely resembling Harold; and Johnson's original construction of a regular 7-sided heptagon.