Is the dress blue and black… or white and gold? This question might very well be answered by budding mathematician and artist Noelle Stringer ’25, who has been named a 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholar.
The Goldwater is one of the nation’s most prestigious scholarships in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics. With an interdisciplinary focus on mathematics and painting, Stringer will utilize the award to expand her exploration into a world where art and special relativity theory go hand in hand.
“Noelle is an extraordinary student of mathematics,” said COA physics and mathematics professor David Feldman. “She has an exceptional mind for mathematics and a calm, matter-of-fact approach to solving problems and learning difficult topics. Equally important, Noelle is passionate about it. Math is simply a part of who she is.”
Stringer is inspired by the work of Edoardo Provenzi and Michel Berthier, she said, who have mathematically identified that color perception is relative and have been developing a way to apply the mathematics of special relativity to more fully understand this phenomenon. This scholarship will allow her to work directly with Provenzi and Berthier over the coming summer.
In the fall, the funds will support her work as she turns her research into a senior project.
“My work over the next year will be to become more familiar with their work by creating visualizations that illustrate the results given in their papers, teach myself the abstract algebra and related mathematics behind their equations, and then develop my own research stemming from this,” she said.
Stringer’s interdisciplinary approach has borne fruits in the form of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, which awards up to $7,500 per academic year. The scholarship was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, an accomplished soldier and statesman. The foundation seeks out young scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who demonstrate talent and show promise of significant contributions in their future careers. In order to apply, scholars must be nominated by their institution.
Stringer will also be painting and making art to better understand pigments and the interactions with each other and the world around them.
“Noelle recognizes that her interests in art and in science are complementary,” said COA drawing and painting professor Neeraj Sebastian. “Making art, like mathematics, is a speculative process: one sets up parameters in which one works, but the results of the process are often unpredictable and surprising.”
“Making art, like mathematics, is a speculative process: one sets up parameters in which one works, but the results of the process are often unpredictable and surprising” — COA drawing and painting professor Neeraj Sebastian.
Deciding to study at College of the Atlantic gave Stringer the freedom to construct her major around her passions of art and mathematics, she said, explaining that her high school education made it seem like she needed to choose one or the other.
“Now I still get to do both of the things that I’m interested in. I’ve been taking as many math and art classes as I can,” she said.
COA’s interdisciplinary nature of the school makes it possible for Stringer to take a deep dive into the physics of color and the complexities that make colors appear the way they do. She’ll be using a framework of multiple concrete theories foundational to modern physics to help demonstrate how color perception is subject to the rules and regulations of special relativity.
Feldman explained that the scientific community has known for some time that “color perception is relative—it is not an absolute, but depends on context. This is reminiscent of the theory of special relativity, in which time is not absolute, as it is in classical physics.”
While the specifics are still floating somewhere in the quantum realm, Stringer said that a facet of her upcoming project might surround digging deeper into the mechanics of color theory.
“Potentially, I’ll be exploring how to mathematically establish why exactly four hues are needed in color opponency as compared to the use of three unique hues in trichromacy,” she said.