Type

One thing I remember well from my years studying science and math is how most of my problem sets and most of the technical papers I had to read all looked the same. This is because a vast majority of stuff is written using LaTeX, a program that basically typesets everything for you after you write it all using something akin to HTML mark-up (only with LaTeX code) on plain text. LaTeX makes is super easy for anyone to write equations and formulas, which is why it's so popular. Scientists/engineers/mathematicians don't like getting frustrated with things like formatting, so it makes sense to have a program that will pretty much just format it for you.

Anyway. I was thinking about type in relationship to my thesis, and I was trying to figure out what this seemingly ubiquitous typeface I saw was. So after some internet poking around, I found out that it's Computer Modern Unicode. Comes in a variety of weights. Serif and sans. Small caps. Itals. Plus a whole slew of glyphs: Greek, math, Cyrillic, etc., etc.. It was originally made using the METAFONT system (but has since been converted to TT and OT) and was intended specifically for computers and LaTeX/TeX. The range of CMU makes it pretty ideal for math, since it has all the symbols that you could possibly want.

Long story short, I found a download for the typeface and decided to play around with it. It's not necessarily the most elegant font, but what it does have is a whole host of connotations that anyone familiar with reading math/science papers will see and recognize.