A Walk Through New Town

So I went on a walking tour out of a guide book. It was 36°F out and windy which wasn’t super pleasant, but it wasn’t so bad either. I walked roughly 8 miles over 3:51. This isn’t exactly the route because google maps is stupid and won’t let you simply tell it where you went, but it is smart in that it allows you to click link and reproduce what you done. Anyway, between B and C on the route listed here, I saw three houses in which Robert Lewis Stevenson, James Clerk Maxwell, and Alexander Graham Bell lived. Three important men, each with three necessary names. I'm assuming no one needs a link to have a clue who Bell is. Anyway, Stevenson (Treasure Island; Jekyll and Hyde) simply lived in one of the houses for about 23 years, but Maxwell and Bell were born in the houses I saw. It’s impressive, even refreshing, to me how much they value science. I later passed two graveyards, one where John Napier is buried with a very large plaque stating that the "Inventor of Logarithms" is buried there. The other lists Colin Maclaurin, of Maclaurin series fame, as one of a few very important long term residents of the yard. When teaching calculus, you mention these two mathematicians.

Maclaurin shares the graveyard with Greyfriars Bobby, the most famous dog in Edinburgh. His owner was a bobby and died. This dog went to the grave of his owner every day for 14 years, staying there the entire day and protecting his owner. When this dog finally died, he did so on his owner's grave. The people of Edinburgh erected a monument to him as an example of true loyalty and he was buried in the Greyfriars Kirk yard with his master. ("Kirk" means "church" I think.)

So the dog is cool, but seriously, Maclaurin proved that every infinitely differentiable function has an exact infinite power series expansion about zero. Maclaurin get’s my vote for productivity; Greyfriars Bobby gets my vote for loyalty and heartwarming story.

Anyway, it was a bit cold to take too many pictures. Here is a picture of me in front of the house in which John Clerk Maxwell was born.


This was not on this walk, but in May, 2008, when I spent a week in this house at an international meeting. Maxwell is of course responsible for Maxwell’s Equations, a fundamental leap forward in the understanding and study of electricity and a much more significant contributor to classical physics than just that. Maxwell is listed on this building as a Natural Philosopher, meaning he was a theoretical physicist. In his day, there was little distinction between a physicist, astronomer, or mathematician. Anyway, this house is now the International Center for Mathematical Sciences. I presented a riveting talk entitled, “Minimally Supported Frequency Composite Dilation Wavelets” in this house. It was cool to be speaking in his house even if the twenty audience members were mostly sleeping or writing emails.

These pictures are from today. First we have a picture of the water of Leith which runs through New Town. I went down and walked along this path.



At the beginning, you can look at this interesting set up in Dean Village, a former center for mills. This water was held back to power a mill or two and feeds into the Water of Leith.



I took this picture of myself from Dean Path with the church in the background, because, well, it's awesome.



Final note, I can't believe that they still have phonebooths, especially decorative ones. I've actually seen maybe four people in two and one half weeks using phone booths. Crazy.



- If you want to see any picture I post more closely, just click on it.