The circle
AMMOC — An International Math Circle — was founded in May 2020 by Yaashaa Golovanov and named in honour of Vladimir Arnold and Jerrold Marsden. It teaches elementary mathematics from an advanced standpoint, in Felix Klein’s phrase, together with the pure mathematics of the university.
Its purpose¶
The circle exists to form young mathematicians. It seeks out pupils in the middle and high-school years, grounds them in proof, and leads the ablest of them, through directed reading and an expository thesis, to the threshold of research.
It is deliberately small. No more than twenty-four pupils study at any one time, in seminars of three to nine; since 2020 they have come from more than twenty countries on six continents. All teaching is given by the director, online.
The name honours the two mathematicians whose work, and whose views on teaching, shaped its founding. Its five letters stand also for the circle’s five commitments: Attrition, Mathematics, Mentorship, Online and Creation.
The five lettersThe emblem and the seal¶
The emblem is drawn from the first proposition of Euclid’s Elements. Two circles are described on a given line, each through the other’s centre, and they meet twice. Above the line, the equilateral triangle gives the A of Arnold; below it, the same triangle turned over gives the M of Marsden.
The seal sets the emblem within two rings, with the year of the circle’s foundation, 2020.
The circle’s pages are set in EB Garamond, a revival by Georg Duffner and Octavio Pardo of the types shown in the Egenolff–Berner specimen of 1592: the roman of Claude Garamond, cut in Paris in the sixteenth century, and the italic of Robert Granjon. It is a letter of the Renaissance, the age that recovered the classical authors and brought Euclid into print; the circle, whose emblem is taken from the first proposition of the Elements, has chosen it for that lineage. A single family serves throughout, in roman, italic and small capitals, from the conviction that economy of means is itself a form of rigour, in typography as in proof.
In brief¶
- Founded
- May 2020
- Director
- Yaashaa Golovanov, founder, mentor and sole lecturer
- Pupils
- No more than twenty-four at a time; since 2020, from more than twenty countries on six continents
- Seminars
- Online, in groups of three to nine; twenty-four hours a month, rising to fifty or more for senior pupils
- Admission
- Throughout the year; see Admission
Correspondence¶
Colophon¶
The pages are set in EB Garamond, in roman, italic and small capitals, as described above.
The emblem, the seal and the plates were drawn for the circle. Plate I, on the home page, is the first proposition of Euclid’s Elements; Plate II, under Programme, the forty-seventh; Plate III, under Research, the sphere and cylinder of Archimedes; Plate IV, in the Chronicle, the arithmetical triangle of Pascal. Beside the portraits of those who inspire us stand figures from their work; the portraits themselves are reproduced from the publicly available sources named on that page.
The site is a set of plain pages, without advertising, cookies or tracking of any kind, and it draws nothing from other sites: even its type is served from here. It can be read in full without scripts, each page prints on A4 paper, and the foot of each page gives the date of its last revision.