Math Goes to the Movies

Chapter 8 Murder in the Hot House

Chapter 8 Murder in the Hot House We were just trying to put the finishing touches to this book, when we received a call from the props department of the Australian cop series City Homicide. In a forthcoming episode, “Hot House,” they were planning on killing a couple of (fictional) mathematicians. To get things right, they wanted to talk to some (nonfictional) mathematicians. Of course, we were delighted to assist. 8.1 The Story In “Hot House” (2010), two mathematicians are murdered. The first, Christopher Bolingbroke, is a former professor of pure mathematics at the University of Melbourne. He is now spending his time coaching brilliant math students, including his own son Harry. The second victim is Gordon Neandes, a failed mathematician. He has been “hot housing” his two brilliant children, Andrea and Liam, to have them achieve where he could not. Harry also never made it and is currently working as a government statistician . Andrea escaped six years ago and is working as a high class prostitute. Andrea’s younger brother Liam is still being tutored by Bolingbroke. At the beginning of the show, Bolingbroke is found strapped to a chair, with his body covered by stab wounds and mathematical writing. We subsequently learn that he was forced to do the writing himself, and that the stab wounds were crossings out of his mistakes. Later, Neandes is killed in the same manner.1 1 Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) also features a corpse decorated with equations. And in Believers (2007), the leader of a crazy cult has discovered a formula that will transport his followers to a safe place before the apocalypse; the cult members have the formula tattooed on their bodies. 103 104 8 Murder in the Hot House It turns out that Andrea and Harry met by chance, and then planned and executed their fathers’ murders, both out of revenge and to save Liam. Ironically, Liam really enjoys the math and didn’t need saving.2 Fig. 8.1 Professor Bolingbroke, one of the murdered mathematicians. 8.2 Let’s Kill Some Mathematicians When we were first contacted by Kate and Slavko, the guys in charge of the props department of City Homicide, they were mainly after some writing samples for the body math, and some math-filled whiteboards and the like. In the end, we did all the displayed mathematics for the episode, checked the mathematics in the script, supplied a couple of tons of math books for props, and spent a few fascinating days on set watching the episode being created. The script had Bolingbrook and Neandes interested in prime numbers and the Riemann hypothesis, and we chose the equations accordingly (figure 8.1). A careful look at the blackboards shows them to be mainly analytic number theory. In particular, the writing on the two bodies was borrowed from Bernhard Riemann’s paper “Über die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse,” and from the chapter dedicated to this paper in Harold Edwards’s classic book, Riemann’s Zeta Function.3 Not the cutting edge research called for in the script, but definitely beautiful mathematics that we hoped would look great on TV. 2 A very similar plot is the basis of the episode “Bright Boy” of the TV series Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2006). 3 Academic Press, New York, 1974. 8.2 Let’s Kill Some Mathematicians 105 Fig. 8.2 Professor Bolingbroke, with Marty on the left and Burkard on the right. The math bodies were supposed to be prominent, and it was clear that the crew were keen to create as powerful an effect as possible. So we went on an initial trip to the Melbourne studio to practice on a trial body, and to plan it all with Kate and Slavko, the makeup department, and Kate Woods, the director. Slavko had located some special pens that tattoo artists use for sketching their designs. They also hired a trial corpse, Luigi. He was an interesting and talkative fellow: as we drew on him, we learned of his quirky theories of love, shoes, and Cinderella. In our trial run, we covered half of Luigi and then met with the director. After some back and forth, it was decided that we would pretty much cover all visible parts of the body with formulas. The writing on the torso was plausible. From figure 8.2, you can see...