“Like looking at an absolute truth” – the beauty of equations

Mathematicians see the same beauty in complex figures and numbers as they do in a piece of Mozart or a painting by Monet, new research suggests. A group of fifteen mathematicians were shown "ugly" and "beautiful" equations while in a brain scanner at University College London - and the beautiful equations provoked a clear response in the part of the brain that deals with emotions. Hannah Fry is from the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis here in London.