ANAMORPHIC IMAGES are those in which the painted image of an object has been distorted in such a way that the object becomes recognizable only by viewing it at an oblique angle or in some curved reflecting surface. Anyone who has visited the National Gallery in London might have seen Hans Holbein's painting "The Ambassadors," in which an odd shape at the bottom of the canvas is seen to be a skull when viewed almost edge-on. Anamorphic images were something of a rage in the Renaissance, and Leonardo and Durer tried the technique as part of their studies of perspective. An eighteenth century innovation was to create anamorphs of paintings by famous artists. A seventeenth century book by Jean-Francois Niceron worked out the geometrical algorithms for producing anamorphic art (the planar and conical cases are pretty easy but cylinders are quite challenging), but this mathematical connection was lost through the centuries. Now, scientists at Guelph University (Ontario, Canada) have re-derived the transform equations needed for producing anamorphs. (Hunt, Nickel, Gigault, American Journal of Physics, March /pnu/2000/; Select Articles; James Hunt, phyjlh@physics.uoguelph.ca, 519-824-4120, x3993; Bernie Nickel, bgn@physics.uoguelph.ca; images at http://physics.uoguelph.ca/)