title: italic symbols in matplotlib?
body: <p>I'm trying to get the gamma symbol to be italicised in a plot label but can't figure out how to do it?</p>
  
  <p>I thought this should work (but doesn't)</p>
  
  <pre><code>plt.xlabel(r'$\mathit{\Gamma}$$^{*}$')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I should add I am using the Helvetica font, so don't want to switch into tex mode, e.g. this doesn't work for me:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import matplotlib
  import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  
  plt.rcParams['font.family'] = "sans-serif"
  plt.rcParams['font.sans-serif'] = "Helvetica"
  plt.rcParams['text.usetex'] = True
  plt.plot(range(5), range(5))
  plt.title('$\Gamma + \mathit{\Gamma}$', fontsize=40)
  plt.show()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>thanks,</p>
  
  <p>Martin </p>