helaman ferguson sculpture: Mary Emily Sinclair's Quintic Discriminant I

Provenance:

a retirement sculpture commissioned by Susanna Epps for the DePaul Univesity Mathematics Department

Collection:

Jeanne LaDuke

Availability:

direct carving, allow 8 weeks

Price:

$500 (USD) for a similar carving

Dimensions:

7" x 7" x 7"

Weight:

4 lbs

Engraving:

a parametric form of the quintic discriminant, very remarkable and deserves to be better known.

Material:

Albemarle Black Serpentine

Cf., voluminous correspondence between the sculptor and Judy Green about Mary Emily Sinclair's work at Chicago at the turn of the previous century. Mary Emily's quintic has the remarkable property of being a ruled surface, it has very interesting cusps. Mary Emily Sinclair was one of Judy Green and Jeanne LaDuke's early women in american mathematics, one of the first PhD's in math from the University of Chicago.

Photo credit: Susanna Epps