On January 21, 2015, Dr. Prannoy Roy, co-founder and executive co-chairperson of NDTV spoke to one of the greatest minds of our times, Professor Manjil Bhargava. He is the winner of the Fields Medal also known as the ‘Mathematics Nobel’. During the interview with Dr Roy, Prof. Bhargava also interacted with an audience of young students about mathematics, which could be taught in an interesting way through Indian classical music that has basic mathematical concepts and the connection between mathematics and music. Prof. Bhargava is also a talented tabla player, having studied under Ustad Zakir Hussain.
It is interesting to note that all the fields of music including the Western melodies patterns, the Hindu raga, the Japanese pentatonic scale etc, conform to a mathematically derived code. This is especially true of Indian classical music where the concept of ‘taal’ or meter (the rhythmic structure of music), is intrinsically linked to numbers. The connection between the two was never doubted in the past, but rather music and mathematics comprised a single whole concept. Shankar Mahadevan, a famous Indian singer, music director and composer, who holds an engineering degree in Computer Science from Mumbai University mentioned, “I never really connected the dots between Music and Math but may be learning to play the harmonium and veena before I was five, helped to develop my mathematical skills without my realizing it.”
Click Here To Join Our WhatsApp Channel
Not only Mathematicians are serious musicians but Physicists, Biologists, Chemists, Biophysicists, and Biochemists are gifted musicians and a good number of them are Nobel Laureates, like Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Ernst Chain, Manfred Eigen, Werner Heisenberg, Jacques Monod, Wilhelm Ostwald, Max Planck to name a few. Once Albert Einstein said, “The greatest scientists are artists as well.”
The musical performance by Albert Einstein was fascinating; He used to play both violin and piano equally. He worked hard to master the art and was the student of G-major violin sonata by Johannes Brahms, a German composer and pianist of that time. His favourite composer was, however, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Einstein fell in love with Mozart’s music at the age of 13. His mother Pauline Koch Einstein was an accomplished pianist in her own right and taught Einstein to play the piano and violin when he was very young. Initially, he showed more aptitude for the piano, but as he became a teenager he developed more interest in the violin. He nicknamed his violin ‘Lina’ and credited it as “I know that most joy in life has come to me from my violin.” Einstein attributed his scientific insight and intuition mainly to music, once he said, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.”
Einstein’s second wife Elsa, remarked, “Music helps him when he is thinking about his theories. He goes to his study, comes back, strikes a few chords on the piano, and jots something down, returns to his study.” Another interesting observation regarding the thinking process of Einstein came from his son Hans Albert Einstein, “Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties.”
ALSO READ: Opinion | Cultivating Gut Harmony - A Path To Wellness And Happiness
The renowned Indian scientists are also famous for their artistic pursuits. Our beloved president, Bharat Ratna, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was very fond of music. He mastered the art of playing a rare type of Indian musical instrument, - Rudraa Veena. The missile man of India said, “One day I’ll play a concert so that I can make people happy.” Dr. H.J. Bhabha was immensely fond of music, painting and writing. Dr. Raja Ramanna, one of India's most eminent nuclear physicists, had a multi-faceted personality. He was a gifted musician and could play piano as dexterously as he could speak about atomic energy. Dr. Ramanna performed several concerts, even with European violinists. He wrote a book on music, ‘The Structure of Music in Raga and Western Systems.’
A study at Boston Children’s Hospital reveals a correlation between musical training and improved executive function in both children and adults. Previous studies have identified a link between musical training and cognitive abilities, but few have looked especially at the effect of early musical training on the executive function (EF) of the brain.
Executive functions are described as high-level cognitive processes that enable people to quickly process and retain information, regulate their behaviours, make good choices, solve problems, and plan and adjust to changing mental demands.
The learning of fine arts, like music, paintings, dance, sculpture, etc. can play an important role in the scientific process. In the 2004 Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium, neuroscientists summarized that interest in arts often leads to higher motivation, there is a genetic reason to pursue art. Further, they established that there is a link between training in music, which leads to the ability to manipulate information, skill in geometry; reading acquisition, sequence learning, and memory improvement.
(The author is a student of law. All views and opinions expressed in the article are the author’s own)