I have long considered the artist and the mathematician to be incompatible specimens; geeks and creatives; oil and water. But artists such as Dürer, accomplished in both art and mathematics, certainly make a good case against my point of view. German Renaissance printmaker Albrecht Dürer made significant contributions to mathematics in literature, publishing works about the principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions. He succeeded at a time when other great thinkers, including polymaths Leonardo da Vinci and Piero della Francesca were thinking in new ways, combining art with mathematics as a way of expressing an ‘ultimate truth’. Nothing conveys Dürer’s capacity for combining the two like his famous engraving…