Spirit of the Dead Watching her fear. Mathews says it is too simple to attribute Tehura's terror to her belief in spirits and irrational fear of the dark; she says, following Sweetman, that Gauguin's sexual predilections should not be ignored when trying to understand the work. Rather, she suggests the girl's fear was a response to Gauguin's aggressive behavior, consistent with his known battering (so says Mathews) of his wife Mette, the submissive fear in her eyes his erotic reward. Stephen F. Eisenman, professor of Art History at Northwestern University, suggests the painting and its narrative is "a veritable encyclopaedia of colonial racism and misogyny".
Proof that π is irrational Proof that π is irrational In the 1760's, Johann Heinrich Lambert proved that the number (pi) is irrational: that is, it cannot be expressed as a fraction "a"/"b", where "a" is an integer and "b" is a non-zero integer. In the 19th century, Charles Hermite found a proof that requires no prerequisite knowledge beyond basic calculus. Three simplifications of Hermite's proof are due to Mary Cartwright, Ivan Niven, and Nicolas Bourbaki. Another proof, which is a simplification of Lambert's proof, is due to Miklós Laczkovich. In 1882, Ferdinand von Lindemann proved that is not just irrational, but transcendental as well.