Fermilab

The gulf between art and mathematics is not nearly as wide as one might think. Beginning on Saturday, April 12, famed statistician and artist Edward Tufte will prove it with an installation at the Fermilab Art Gallery titled The Cognitive Art of Feynman Diagrams.

The exhibit features Tufte’s three-dimensional steel sculptures, built in the shape of Feynman diagrams, the data visualization tool devised by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the 1940s. Feynman diagrams are used in every analysis made at Fermilab, and Tufte’s work emphasizes their inherent beauty.

Tufte’s exhibit is the cornerstone of a Feynman celebration at Fermilab, which kicks off with a pair of events, listed below. The exhibit runs through June 26. The exhibit also includes a display of the famous “Feynman van” and Tufte’s Airstream trailer, the “Interplanetary Explorer.” Click here for further details.

Edward Tufte is a professor emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design. He wrote, designed, and self-published four award-winning books on analytical design. He’s best known as a master of informational graphics, and he teaches courses on presenting data and information. He has been described by The New York Times as “the Leonardo da Vinci of data,” and by Business Week as the "Galileo of Graphics." His artwork has been shown at the Architecture+Design Museum in Los Angeles, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Artists Space and ET Modern in New York City.

Images of Tufte’s work are available here. The Fermilab site is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. Tours of the laboratory and the art gallery are given every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Special tours of the Tufte exhibit will be given on Saturdays at 10 a.m., or by appointment. Please call 630-840-6825 or email georgia@fnal.gov.