In 1948, François Le Lionnais (1901–84) published an essay in which he distinguished two types of beauty in mathematics:

• ‘Classical’ mathematical beauty, which impressed by its control and austerity.

• ‘Romantic’ mathematical beauty, which manifested in wildness, non-conformity, and strangeness.

Classical beauty was found where there was unification, such as in the 9-point circle of a triangle (see 1st attached image), or how the circle, ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola all arise from the focus–directrix construction (see 2nd attached image) and from conic sections, and can transformed into one another by projective transformations.

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