Max Ehrenfreund

The New Haven Institute of Religion on a nice sunny day like today.

Illustration by Ali Abarca The food’s on the table: chicken salad, tomatoes, grapes, chips, and a bowl of York Peppermint Patties. Let’s go ahead and say a blessing! A graduate student in astronomy bends his head. Our father in Heaven, we are grateful to be able to have Institute today, to discuss the problems of life and put them in the light and perspective of Scripture. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Institute is just a short name for Institutes of Religion, the program. . . Read more

The oldest extant record of an approximation of the square root of two is one of the treasures of Yale’s Babylonian Collection.

An old tablet finds new life. Andrew Nelson Four millennia ago in northern Mesopotamia, archeologists speculate, a young Babylonian was practicing geometry. One problem required finding the length of the diagonal of a square. Taking his circular tablet of damp clay in one hand and his favorite reed in the other, he copied down the exercise, sketching out a diagram of a square with a few hasty strokes. He wrote the square root of two along one diagonal, multiplied by the side length, and scrawled. . . Read more

An investigation of eating disorders at Yale.

Alex knows how many calories are in an egg. She knows how many calories are in a yolk, and how many are in the white. “That’s something I will know for the rest of my life,” she said. “That’s a raw fact. That’s like three times three for me.” Every bite adds up. Heeseung Kim The number of calories is only one side of the equation, though. The number of pounds is the other, and for a while, Alex wasn’t the only one closely tracking. . . Read more