Some of the world's greatest mathematical minds will be tasked with explaining why art, music and literature only exist thanks to numbers at Rome's annual Maths Festival next month.
Among the famous number crunchers at the event will be five Nobel Prize winners including John Nash, the American mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, and Indian economist Amartya Sen, who works on the equations behind famine.
But writers, artists and composers will also be in on the act in an effort to woo a traditionally maths-phobic public to the four-day event, this year entitled Mathematics: The Queen of Science and Art.
''Everyone still thinks maths is boring, so the idea of the festival is to present it in a more interesting way without dumbing things down,'' said eminent Italian mathematician and festival director Piergiorgio Odifreddi. The festival kicks off with a lecture by Umberto Eco, author of international bestseller The Name of the Rose, who will talk about the ''perverse use'' of mathematics in front of an audience including Italian president Giorgio Napolitano.
Nicola Piovani, Oscar-winning composer of the music to Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, will present his new composition Epta, a piece in seven movements for seven musicians.
''For me the number seven has a seductive, indefinable quality,'' Piovani explained.
Other highlights include a juggler with a maths degree who will explain how his numbers nous helped him enter the Guiness Book of World Records for keeping 12 objects in the air at the same time; and Alfio Quarteroni, the mathematician behind Swiss yacht sindicate Alinghi, who will reveal the secrets behind the boat that won last year's Americas Cup.
Special events for kids include a session on how comic-book superheroes could never get by without a little mathematical know-how, examining Batman's feats of geometry and Spiderman's use of algebra as they try to save the world from the clutches of evil.
The festival will close with a discussion between Nash and Israeli Nobel winner Robert Aumann about game theory, or the winning combination of strategies a player must adopt in any given situation.
The theory was memorably illustrated in the Russell Crowe film by a win-win bar pick-up situation if the contenders forget about the blonde they wanted in the first place. Organisers are hoping to repeat the success of the first edition of the maths fest in 2007.
''Last year the festival amazed everyone with more than 50,000 people turning up, often to attend extremely specialised lessons,'' said Gianni Borgna, who directs the Auditorium festival venue.
As well as lectures there will be concerts, ballets, films and an exhibition of 66 engravings, drawings and watercolours by mathematically-minded Dutch artist M. C. Escher, many on show in Europe for the first time.
Rome Maths Festival 2008 runs March 13-16 at the Auditorium-Parco della Musica.
