I recently added a Curve of the Month feature to The Freelance Mind online, partly because it was such an obvious feature to post on a website with a strong mathematical emphasis, and partly as a trailer-cum-momentum-generator for A Zoology of Curves, a project currently under development which is planned ultimately to exist in printed as well as online form.

Why a “zoology”? I chose the imagery to underline the diversity of the subject matter as much as its aesthetic appeal. If only we as an alert, inquiring culture could develop the same unbridled curiosity about the denizens of the geometric bestiary that we bring to the stunning wildlife documentaries created by National Geographic or the BBC, we might find ourselves taking the first step toward rehabilitating mathematics as an area of mainstream human experience. Developing the essential bread-and-butter skills of math is no less important for being self-admittedly daunting for many teachers, but there is also a place for wonder in our children’s experience of mathematics, if only we as parents and educators knew where to find it ourselves. Some of the first books I read were the beautiful How and Why Wonder books of the 60s and 70s, where I made discoveries about dinosaurs, our solar system, and our own evolutionary story whose excitement still fires my imagination every day that that I think about them  which is to say, every day of my life. But I never read a How and Why Wonder book about anything to do with math.

A simple cardioid and its more famous fractal cousin:  or ?

The curling tail of a diplodocus, modelled as a stretched logarithmic spiral

So this exploration, this search for ideas and entities that remind us what the word “wonder” actually means, is what I am trying to extend, in a small way, to a few mathematical “lost worlds”. That said, here’s a glimpse of a few of the creatures you might see on mathematical safari:

The Curve of the Month page is a pretty accurate introduction to A Zoology of Curves, which will form a sequence of individual layouts  somewhat as in Dorling Kindersley’s excellent Eyewitness series  each concerned with a particular curve or family of curves. I have tried to keep things accessible to the mathematically unitiated, while at the same time not wholly disappointing those who have some confidence with math and want to know a bit more. Thus, while there is a fair amount of mathematical content, I have rendered most of the math in blue to flag its optional status. I am not really aiming below adolescence with A Zoology of Curves, but let’s say that I’m gearing up the long lenses for the curious child within any adult.