Wiskundig model 1906 - 1945

Reijer Stolk made this mathematical model at an unknown date, probably using graphite on paper. Imagine him, lost in thought, working on this diagram, which is a beautiful fusion of math and art! He’s got a couple of semi-circles divided up into sections with little columns—it reminds me a bit of a cityscape, or maybe even the rings of a tree trunk, each line representing a year of growth. You can see the numbers scrawled here and there, equations trying to bring the image into a calculable form. There’s a real beauty to this kind of visual thinking, where math becomes a way of seeing and understanding the world. Stolk seems to be searching for something, maybe a way to reconcile the concrete with the abstract, but I think there’s also something else: a conversation between science and art, and how they could relate to each other.