Beauty of Design

"Mathematics has inherent beauty and structure. It may not be symmetrical - it can be very awkward - but that is its inherent challenge," says mathematics professor Dinesh Sarvate (left). "People do mathematics for its beauty and surprise, to discover something different."

That's exactly what Sarvate and his then-student Will Beam '07 did when they came up with what became known as Sarvate-Beam designs - a new kind of mathematical block design that is intriguing mathematicians the world over.

"What appeals to people is that it's completely opposite from what was being done," says Sarvate, explaining that, heretofore, block designs were assumed balanced. "People insisted on balance - they put restrictions on design."

By lifting this restriction, Sarvate and Beam (now in his first year at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine) re-envisioned design, finding within it something new, something different.

And, for them, that's the beauty of it all.