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You always hear it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for—and indeed, Bulent Atalay is one to watch.
To peek into the life of this soft-spoken man is to be amazed. His quiet ramblings reveal an astounding personal history.
Intrigue seems to run in the family blood. Atalay’s grandfather died while battling Lawrence of Arabia, and his father was a Turkish military attaché to London, Paris and Washington.
But Atalay maintains his family’s precedent of accomplishment.
He is scientist, artist, and writer.
Atalay accidentally ended up in physics when an admissions secretary at Georgetown University misread his college application stating his desire to become a physician as physicist. However, after taking a few courses, Atalay discovered a dormant talent for the field.
He is now a professor of physics at Mary Washington College, an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Atalay is also an accomplished artist.
“I grew up with art. We were living in France and my parents bought some really wonderful 18th- and 19th-century pieces,” Atalay said.
“I had some art lessons there, and my art teacher believed in teaching art by copying masters. I agree, you learn from great artists much better than you do from mediocre art teachers,” he explained.
Apparently his teacher’s technique worked. After he produced a book of lithographs in 1972 titled “Lands of Washington: Impressions in Ink,” the queen of England wrote to Atalay, asking him to do another book of lithographs of England. He complied, creating “Oxford and the English Countryside,” in 1974. His works are now housed in The White House, Buck-ingham Palace, and Smithsonian Institution.
So what is this virtuoso’s most recent project? He has just completed his newest book. “Math and the Mona Lisa,” published by Smithsonian Press, is scheduled to appear in stores mid-March.
Atalay explained his interest in Leonardo da Vinci.
“I think he has all my same passions, but he did them so much better,” he said.
In “Math and the Mona Lisa” Atalay looks at da Vinci as a synthesis of scientist and artist, and explores how da Vinci consciously blended his mathematical knowledge of patterns, proportions and symmetries with his aesthetic genius to create his artwork.
“I was struck by the amount of science that da Vinci purposefully injected into his art and how that science has been unconsciously acquired by so many artists after him,” said Matt Litts, publicity manager for Smithsonian Press.
The book goes into detail about da Vinci’s use of the golden ratio—1:1.62, which occurs frequently in nature and which the human eye finds naturally aesthetically pleasing. Atalay reveals how da Vinci was aware of this phenomenon and used the ratio consciously in creating the proportions of his works.
Yet despite the book’s attention to math and science, Atalay claims, “My biggest achievement in writing this was being able to communicate to the intelligent layman and not to the scientist.”
But, Atalay’s favorite part of writing the book was a much more intimate experience.
“I most enjoyed the handling of Leonardo’s Codices,” he said, referring to about 2,000 of The National Gallery of Art’s reproductions of da Vinci’s original manuscripts.
“My discovery about Leonardo’s thoughts regarding the design of a reflecting telescope—160 years before Newton invented the reflector—and the notion of his superhuman faculty—the preternatural vision—came from studying his various codices.”
Atalay believes da Vinci had superhuman sight.
“Ted Williams, the great baseball player had it,” he said. Williams could see the seams on a baseball coming at him at 95 miles per hour.
“Leonardo evidently could see things like that because he illustrated a whole notebook of birds’ wings flapping—serial motion. With high-speed photography you can do that now, but he was doing it with his pencil and charcoal.”
Atalay’s writing process has not been short.
“In the last four years I have been writing feverishly,” Atalay said. “It was harder than doing my Ph.D. thesis.”
In the summer of 2000, Atalay met Keith Wamsley, a student in Atalay’s graduate course, “Character of Physical Law.”
“Atalay asked me if I would mind reading over a chapter of his book and making some editorial comments,” said Wamsley, who has degrees in English and classics from Cornell University. “It turned from one chapter into reading the whole book.”
Wamsley ended up as one of Atalay’s unofficial copy editors.
“I’ve always been interested in intellectual history, and this book touched on many major figures of Western intellectual history, not only art figure,” he said. “There wasn’t anything about the book that wasn’t interesting to me.
“Each academic discipline has a restricted view [of da Vinci]—they don’t connect the artist with the scientist or vice versa. I hope the impact will be that the disciplines will take account for the other side of Leonardo within their own discipline.”
In 2002, Atalay came to Thomas Somma, director of Mary Washington College galleries, with an idea for an art show. The two co-organized the Ridderhof Martin Gallery show “Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Scientist, Engineer.”
Somma also stressed the importance of forging a connection between science and art.
“Both Bulent and I have a foot in both the doors of science and art,” he said. “One thing we were both aware of was that scientists speak a different language than people in the humanities.
“We thought it would be the perfect time to explore what the sciences and humanities have in common and to encourage meaningful discussion between the two.”
Somma said of Atalay’s work, “I think any endeavor that builds bridges between two things is a very valuable contribution because there are so many things in the world to separate us.”
To reach TERESA GEARY:
540/374-5779
tgear6la@mwc.edu