In the study, researchers led by Semir Zeki of University College London asked 16 mathematicians to rate 60 equations on a scale ranging from "ugly" to "beautiful." Two weeks later, the mathematicians viewed the same equations and rated them again while lying inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. The scientists found that the more beautiful an equation was to the mathematician, the more activity his or her brain showed in an area called the A1 field of the medial orbitofrontal cortex.Skipping down to the last three paragraphs...
The study found, for example, that the beauty of equations is not entirely subjective. Most of the mathematicians agreed on which equations were beautiful and which were ugly, with Euler's identity, 1+eiπ=0, consistently rated the most attractive equation in the lot. "Here are these three fundamental numbers, e, pi and i," Adams says, "all defined independently and all critically important in their own way, and suddenly you have this relationship between them encompassed in this equation that has a grand total of seven symbols in it? It is dumbfounding."
On the bottom of the heap, mathematicians consistently rated Srinivasa Ramanujan's infinite series for 1/π most ugly.
"It doesn't sing," Adams says. "I look at it, and I don't learn anything new about pi. And those numbers, 26,390? 9801? As far as I am concerned, you could switch in other numbers, and I couldn't tell the difference."Scientific American
