Meet “Mathemalchemy,” a traveling math-meets-art installation coming eventually to a dimension near you.
Ingrid Daubechies, a mathematician at Duke University, is an expert on many matters, not least the baking of cookies in the shape of pi, the mathematical constant that equals the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, or roughly 3.14159. A sugar cookie recipe works fine, Dr. Daubechies says. But she prefers a savory version with cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano) and herbs (thyme and marjoram).
In the summer of 2023, Dr. Daubechies made a pi-shaped cookie cutter that tiles the plane: In principle, when this shape cuts cookies from a large sheet of dough, it generates absolutely no wasteful scraps from one cookie to the next, row upon row upon row. (The reality of crumbs makes it hard to execute this ideal perfectly, Dr. Daubechies noted.)