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From: Robert on 11 Jan 2010 05:48
On 10 Jan, 23:36, Ken Pledger <ken.pled...(a)mcs.vuw.ac.nz> wrote:
> In article
> <50340ff9-908b-45d6-b08a-c9bc6dcd2...(a)a21g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
>
>  Robert <robertmarkharri...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > ....
> > but the question came up and i had trouble thinking of one that was
> > even slightly good looking....
>
>       That may be because most portraits of mathematicians date from
> when they had become eminent and were quite old.  It's harder to find
> pictures of them when they were younger (and not eminent enough to be
> worth painting); but if you track down some of those you may find them a
> better-looking bunch than you thought.   :-)
>
>             Ken Pledger.

20th century photographic evidence doesn't seem to support this. in
fact it was photographs that led to this question.

thanks for the abel, galois, bessel tips mensanator
From: G. A. Edgar on 11 Jan 2010 10:54

Some of the 19th century portraits of mathematicians are quite
striking: Dressed in the latest of fashion, with beards trimmed just
so. But maybe they were that way only for the portrait, and did not
look so good the rest of the time.

--
G. A. Edgar http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/
From: PiperAlpha167 on 11 Jan 2010 02:00
> it's a poser, isn't it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kovalevskaya
From: G. A. Edgar on 11 Jan 2010 13:01
I searched "handsome" in the mathematician biographies at
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/index.html
and found these mathematicians described with that adjective...

Harish-Chandra
Heyting
Alberti
Klein
Pell
Marcinkiewicz
Weyl
Savile
(William Stirling) Hamilton

Examples:
Pell was a striking figure, remarkably handsome, with strong, excellent
posture, dark hair and eyes, and a good voice.


.... the sunny days when the tall handsome young professor [Klein] wooed
and won the lovely granddaughter of the philosopher Hegel.

--
G. A. Edgar http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/
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