Hamid Naderi Yeganeh
Hamid Naderi Yeganeh is an Iranian mathematician, mathematical artist and digital artist. He is known for using mathematical formulas to create drawings of real-life objects, intricate and symmetrical illustrations, animations, fractals and tessellations. Naderi Yeganeh uses mathematics as the main tool to create artworks. Therefore, his artworks can be totally described by mathematical concepts. Mathematical concepts he uses in his work include trigonometric functions, exponential function, Fibonacci sequence and the sawtooth wave.
His artwork 9,000 Ellipses was used as the background cover image of The American Mathematical Monthly – November 2017. His artwork Heart was used as the image for the February page of the 2016 Calendar of Mathematical Imagery published by the American Mathematical Society. His artwork Bird was used as the postcard image of the Art ∩ Math exhibit held at Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle in 2018. One of Naderi Yeganeh's artworks was used as the cover image for Newsletter of Iranian Mathematical Society, Autumn 2015. His works, including A Bird in Flight and Boat, have been used on several pages of the International Mathematical Knowledge Trust (IMKT)'s website. His art has also been featured in some school math textbooks including one that was published by Oxford University Press. In 2025, he delivered a presentation at UNESCO's webinar celebrating the International Day of Mathematics.
Education
Naderi Yeganeh received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Qom and a M.Sc. in pure mathematics from Sharif University of Technology and his PhD from University College London. His MSc dissertation was focused on numerical methods for approximation and visualization of invariant manifolds in dynamical systems and his PhD thesis title was Invariant Sets and Stability in Dynamical Systems Applied to Theoretical Ecology and Population Genetics. He won a gold medal at the 38th Iranian Mathematical Society's nationwide mathematics competition held at Graduate University of Advanced Technology in May 2014 and a silver medal at the 39th IMS's nationwide mathematics competition held at Yazd University in May 2015. A special report about University of Qom's achievements and statistics in the years between 2013 and 2020 issued by the university's budget management and published by the Iranian MSRT stated Naderi Yeganeh's winning a gold medal at the 38th IMS's math competition as one of the five outstanding achievements of the university's students in the 2013–2020 period. According to one of the 38th IMS competition committee members, winning a gold medal by a student from University of Qom was a highlight of that competition.Works
Drawings of real-life objects
Naderi Yeganeh has introduced two methods to draw real-life objects with mathematical formulas. By the first method, he creates tens of thousands of computer-generated mathematical figures to find a few interesting shapes accidentally. Then he changes the equations a little bit in order to increase the resemblance of the accidentally found shapes to real life objects. For example, by using this method, he found some shapes that resemble birds, fishes and sailing boats. In the second method, he draws a real life object with a step-by-step process. In each step, he tries to find out which mathematical formulas will produce the drawing. For example, by using this method, he drew birds in flight, butterflies, human faces and plants using trigonometric functions. Naderi Yeganeh says: "In order to create such shapes, it is very useful to know the properties of the trigonometric functions". In 2018, in an interview with the Sharif University of Technology Public Relations, Naderi Yeganeh said: "I use mathematical concepts in a work of art in a way that it could be thoroughly explained in a paragraph. That makes the understanding of an artwork's scientific underpinning easier". More recently, he has introduced a method to describe an image pixel-by-pixel by using a network of mathematical functions.''A Bird in Flight''
An instance of drawing real things by using Yeganeh's methods is A Bird in Flight, which is the name of a number of bird-like geometric shapes introduced by Naderi Yeganeh. Yeganeh created those drawings by using the two methods mentioned above. An example of A Bird in Flight that was created by his first method is made of 500 segments defined in a Cartesian plane where for each the endpoints of the -th line segment are:and
The 500 line segments defined above together form a shape in the Cartesian plane that resembles a flying bird. Looking at the line segments on the wings of the bird causes an optical illusion and may trick the viewer into thinking that the line segments are curved lines. Therefore, the shape can also be considered as an optical artwork. Another version of A Bird in Flight that was designed by Naderi Yeganeh's second method is the union of all of the circles with center and radius, where, and
The set of the 20,001 circles defined above form a subset of the Cartesian plane that resembles a flying bird. Although this version's equations are a lot more complicated than the version made of 500 segments, it has a far better resemblance to a real flying bird. It uses the periodic nature of trigonometric functions to form the feathers.
Other works similar to this version of A Bird in Flight that was released by Naderi Yeganeh in 2016 are in the form of a flying parrot, magpie and stork.