Smitten

Aristotle, a student of Plato, described love as "two bodies and one soul".

The mathematician Edward Frenkel,  a  Russian  mathematical  prodigy  who  became  a  professor  at  Harvard at  twenty-­one  and  who  now  teaches  at  Berkeley,  is  an  unabashed  Platonist.  Frenkel describes his love of mathematics in the same way that Plato describes Eros, the ideal physical beauty that causes the arousal of physical attraction.

And  he  wants  everybody  to  share  that  passion  and  joy.  Once 

 smitten,  the  young  Frenkel  became  obsessed  with  learning  as  much  of mathematics  as  he  could.  (“This  is  what  happens  when  you  fall  in  love.”)  

   Frenkel created a film called "Rites of Love and Math" to help others appreciate the beauty of mathematics.  The “formula  of  love”  used  in  the  film  was  one  that  Frenkel  himself  discovered  (in  the  course of  investigating  the  mathematical  underpinnings  of  quantum  field  theory).  It  is  beautiful, yet  forbidding.  The  only  numbers  in  it  are  zero,  one,  and  infinity.  Isn’t  love  like  that? 

    To get an idea how mathematical beauty can open the door to love , listen to the counterpoint of Bach's Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C Major from The Well- Tempered Clavier.