In the late ’80s, a Harvard lecturer by the name of Steven Strogatz suggested an unusual class exercise to his students.The day’s topic would be the Mathematics of Love. Professor Strogatz’s motivations were plain cheeky. Confronted with the challenge of capturing his students’ attention on the predictive powers of equations, he reworded a common undergraduate mathematics problem into a language he thought the students would relate to: the evolution of the love affair between Romeo and Juliet. His ingenuity should not be taken lightly: turning a group of hormone-raging twentyyear olds into utterly focused mathematical geniuses is a complex task. I wish I had been in his class to witness the full event.

Steven Strogatz didn’t base his class exercise on extensive psychological research; he was just a Harvard lecturer having a bit of fun. But little did he realise he was actually beginning (more…)