Happy July!

I have two small pieces of math-adjacent news for you. The first is that the science-fiction-about-scientists anthology Rosalind's Siblings is available for pre-order.

In my current job, every day I read a handful of apologies from mathematicians who have realized they can't read a paper as thoroughly as they had hoped. Huge, terrifying world events show up obliquely, in the patterns of where and why mathematicians can't volunteer. My poem "Circle Packing" is inspired in part by these observations at a distance and in part by my own experience as a professor in Wisconsin.

I wrote "Circle Packing" for Rosalind's Siblings in 2018. Since then, there have been far too many world events--my poem about a breakdown of supply chains was delayed in part by worldwide paper shortages!--but the anthology is finally scheduled, and soon you will be able to read it. Here's some Wisconsin scenery to set the mood.

Meanwhile, this month I published an AMS Feature Column about particle physics, number theory, and the shapes of doughnuts. This column uses some calculus and includes my cartoon of an easily confused orange cat.

Kosmas, a much more confident orange cat, is expert in the shapes of boxes.

Yours, Ursula.