Ben Orlin has a new book coming out soon (October). I’ve already interviewed him twice here, and mentioned him ~1729 other times as well, so didn't feel I could justify a third interview and let him pull that far ahead of others (I mean I didn't get to interview Grothendieck even once!), so instead I’ll offer up a brief “profile” of Dr. Ben… America’s math-Cartoonist-In-Chief.
First off, ya know how when you hear someone's voice on the radio for awhile you develop a picture in your mind of what they look like — and then when you finally see them, they are utterly different from what you expected! Well, that was sort of me and Ben. From reading his blog regularly I formed a very clear picture early on of this Orlin guy in my head:
48 years old, about 5’11,” receding dark-grey/light-black hairline, 165 lbs, trim athletic build, conservatively-dressed, golfer, married with 3 children and a collie or labrador retriever.
…And then I finally saw video of Dr. Orlin… or else some impostor making off with his speaking fees, and my image shattered:
Nobody who looks this young should have any right to be so brilliant… and funny… and perceptive. After-all, some of us take 65+ years to attain one troy ounce of such wisdom. And surely, his wife must disdain him… I mean when she is 60 years old and looking 39, he will probably be 63 and looking 29… such is life, unfair and illogical! …But, I digress.
Anyway, Ben’s new book is sure to be another boring, wordy, eye-rolling, gobbledy-gook volume of… er, no, wait, that’s Bill O’Reilly’s next piece of ghostwritten crapola… Ben’s book will be a delicious cornucopia of the current math topic du jour, calculus (which was allowed to leap ahead of Bayesian probability this year). Steve Strogatz has already given us a lush history and overview of calculus, and now I expect Dr. Orlin will flesh out some of the nuts-and-bolts in a way that only he and his li’l round-faced amigos can do. Calculus with laughs! Who’d a-thunkit… certainly no one in my generation.
But enough about Ben’s coming attractions; a little bit of his background:
I could not find his birthdate (but I think he was raised in Boston, and he has that Red-Sox-fan sort of naive look about him). So, maybe he's a Sagittarius and maybe he ain't. In fact I couldn’t find much at all about his personal life, siblings, or upbringing. It’s as if he just showed up one day, fully-formed, plopped on planet Earth from some galaxy far, far away. Hmmm… (I don’t wanna know what happens if he ambles into a room with kryptonite). He did graduate from Yale, but I suspect many extraterrestrials may have matriculated there.
Ben has taught middle/high school math in Oakland, California, and Birmingham, in the UK (where his wife did a math postdoc), and thus knows how to speak both English and British fluently. He also briefly taught biology, psychology, English, and earth science, and for some fully explicable reason has yet to be assigned to teach Drawing 101… a near-Renaissance Man in the age of emojis. He admits to being very 'liberal artsy,' while his wife is more the specialist or purer mathematician. I can imagine that while his wife is in the living room solving some equation in fluid dynamics, Ben is in his man-cave figuring out how to deftly capture just the right combination of surprise and smirk on one of his hand-scrawled faces.
He has said that his “academic interests run a mile wide and three feet deep” which is probably part of what makes his work so fun and fascinating, and somewhat unpredictable… I’m trying to arrange with the Dept. of Education to have Ben cloned (because no child should have to grow up, like me, without a Ben Orlin to teach them math), but thus far Betsy DeVos has not returned my phone calls... the fact that I sign my emails to her, "The Resistance" may not help.
For now Ben is taking up residence in Minnesota (and teaching), so please everyone, send him blankets, ear muffs, and hot cocoa; I’m not sure that he knows what he’s in for.
Ben has freelanced various venues along the way and started his now must-read blog “Math With Bad Drawings” in 2013 -- my original 2015 interview with him is here:
He says he always has “a folder of half-baked ideas-in-progress” from which he seems to draw a never-ending supply of fresh, fully-baked material — it’s almost like a magician who just keeps pulling rabbits out of a hat, one after another… except it’s not always a rabbit, but may be a raccoon, possum, chihuahua, or lemur.
Of course today Ben is rich and famous… or at least readily-employable and better known than he was a few years back. In fact, I bet he can barely walk the street (...immediately outside of the Museum of Mathematics in New York city) without being stopped by autograph hounds and fans wanting to take selfies. Being able to pass as Paul McCartney’s grandson probably doesn't hurt his math rock-star status either.
I could not find a single picture of Ben ever wearing a tie (further earning my immediate, deep, and abiding respect!)… I used to have a line on my resume, that stated my “Life’s Goal” was: “To make a decent living without ever wearing a tie” — indeed, just about the only life goal I actually accomplished.
Here was my overview of his fantastic first book, “Math With Bad Drawings,” which, against stiff competition, became my math book-of-the-year for 2018:
https://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2018/10/good-math-bad-drawings-great-book.html
We're all anxiously awaiting the big-screen movie version, starring James Grime.
We're all anxiously awaiting the big-screen movie version, starring James Grime.
And gee, it’s possible his new book, “Change Is the Only Constant,” could end up as my 2019 book-of-the-year, an unheard of back-to-back two-fer, at which point I think Ben can retire to a life of doodling and let his wife support him henceforth.
A couple months ago Ben wrote about the new book… AND another small volume that he co-authored with his wife ;))
Yes, Ben had a new daughter (first child) just a couple of months back. By now no doubt in her spare moments she is exploring the Riemann zeta function while learning to say first words like “derivative” and "epsilon."
Jim Propp also has a daughter (whose name, by the way, is NOT Kurt) who will probably be getting her PhD. at MIT at just about the same time that Ben’s daughter is applying for admission either to there, or alternatively (if she’s reeeeally bright) to Pomona College (assuming no earthquake has sent California into the Pacific Ocean by then). But I digress… again.
You can find Ben on Twitter (where he often posts material additional to what ends up on his blog): https://twitter.com/benorlin
He also has a Facebook page, but I refuse to link to FB pages until Mark Zuckerberg fires himself and apologizes to the world-at-large.
He also has a Facebook page, but I refuse to link to FB pages until Mark Zuckerberg fires himself and apologizes to the world-at-large.
You must of course buy Ben's upcoming book (and all future books), subscribe to his blog, and if you ever have the opportunity to see him speak, take it. Other than that just ignore the guy. As funny as he is, he's not as funny as Ben Stiller:
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Prior math profiles have been of:
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