Portal:Mathematics/Featured picture/2012 04

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Picture of the month

Credit: TakuyaMurata (uploader)

A hand-drawn graph of the absolute value of the gamma function on the complex plane, as published in the 1909 book Tables of Higher Functions by Eugene Jahnke and Fritz Emde. Such three-dimensional graphs of complicated functions were rare before the advent of high-resolution computer graphics. Published even before applications for the complex gamma function were discovered in theoretical physics in the 1930s, Jahnke and Emde's graph "acquired an almost iconic status", according to physicist Michael Berry. See a similar computer generated image for comparison.

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