The story of a shopping bag (Q1361176)

This paper describes a solution of a problem in the neglected field of the rhetoric (or marketing) of mathematics. To celebrate its 500th anniversary, the University Library of Copenhagen arranged to provide a series of fifteen designs, each presenting one of the subjects in the Library, for brown paper shopping bags used by a food store chain. Hansen was asked to design the bag with the theme Mathematics. He wanted to show that mathematics is not only theoretical but has to do with grasping the world in which we live, and that a theory can result from the combined efforts of mathematicians from many countries over a long period. His solution was to describe Dirac's String Problem and developments leading to Fadell's solution. The illustrations and text (with translation) for the shopping bag are reproduced. In the present economic climate, this field may be of increasing importance.