Mathematician Étienne Ghys (ENS Lyon) delivers a 58-minute public lecture tracing the geometry of letterforms from da Vinci’s proportional studies to Knuth’s TeX/Metafont system.
Key Takeaways
Lecture given at the 2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings as the MAA-AMS-SIAM Gerald and Judith Porter Public Lecture.
Bridges Renaissance geometric construction of letters with Knuth’s computational approach to typeface design via Metafont.
Full video is ~59 minutes and available on the Joint Mathematics Meetings YouTube channel with auto-dubbed audio in multiple languages.
Connects two distinct historical frameworks for formalizing letterforms: da Vinci’s geometric idealism and Knuth’s parametric curve mathematics.
