Steven Strogatz

A high-school science teacher had him time the swing of a pendulum at various lengths. He found that graphing his measurements formed a parabola. “I got an uncanny chill. There’s something secret that I have just seen, that if you don’t know math, you can’t see.” A mathematician is born. Plus, life with Murray the dog. Music: Bobby Sanabria. Presented with the National Museum of Mathematics.