True Love in an Integer

Math lecturer Oliver Knill—the Swiss-born course head for Math 21a and 21b—has a secret life. He's better known outside Harvard not for inducting countless math and science concentrators into the ways of multivariable calculus, but for his comprehensive, online list of movie clips with math references.

It's not just A Beautiful Mind or Proof either. In Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Kumar wins over his long-lost girlfriend when she's about to marry his arch-rival, by reciting the poem that she had tried to get him to read aloud when they first met (and made out) in a library:

"I fear that I will always be a lonely number like root 3," he recites from memory. "The three is all that is good and right. Why must my 3 keep out of sight, beneath a vicious square root sign?"

"Such is my reality, a sad irrationality," Kumar continues. "When hark, what is this I see? Another square root of a three comes quietly waltzing by. Together now we multiply to form a number we prefer—rejoicing as an integer."

More unexpected math cinema, after the jump.

Dr. Knill said that he started this Web site in 2006 just for fun as a movie collector. "I love movies," said Dr. Knill, who grew up in a Swiss village on the Rhine River near Zurich. "My place is filled with books and movies. We have stacked them on the floors."

But Dr. Knill's collection has transformed into much more than a just-for-fun Web site. At least 100 public high school teachers across the country have contacted Dr. Knill, who started teaching at Harvard in 2000, to let him know that they have used his movie clips in class, sometimes using them for class assignments and projects. Some of these teachers (and even a few high school students) write to Dr. Knill to send him suggestions for other movie clips.

Some great movies, other than Harold and Kumar, whose clips are showcased include Back to the Future III, Mean Girls, an episode from The Simpsons, The Da Vinci Code, and more Mean Girls. Yes, FlyBy has very high-brow taste.