Lunatico – Gotan Project

The Maths of Tango

Turning a mathematical theorem and proof into a musical

How do you make a musical about a bunch of dead mathematicians and one very alive, very famous, Princeton math professor?

Andrew Wiles, the Eugene Higgins professor of math, gained worldwide fame for his 1993 solution to Fermat’s last theorem, which dates to 1637. The theorem states that for the equation xn+yn=zn there are no positive whole numbers that solve this when “n” is greater than 2.

French mathematician Pierre de Fermat had noted the theorem in the margin of a book and wrote that

Breaking the rules as the tango music tugs at the heart

European Times: MADRID

CHAMARTIN STATION is Madrid’s Gare du Nord, its King’s Cross, hectic and seedy. Passengers here are not bound for glamorous southern beaches but the greyer north, a remote home village on that cruel plain, or further afield beyond the Pyrenees.

Last Sunday, amid crisscrossing travellers scanning the noticeboards, some enthusiasts were dancing the Argentine tango. They had rigged up a sound system and, punctuated with crackly announcements of trains departing for Zaragoza or Santander, the sleazy, soupy wail of the accordion-like bandoneon floated down the concourse.

The surprising thing was not so much the unlikely venue.