ABOVE: Dan Rockmore, as profiled in the current issue of Wired. Rockmore is using crazy software to verify the authenticity of Rembrants.

OK, in the second Wired missive this week (we know, we know), we delve ever-deeper into tech geekery, with a profile of Dan Rockmore, a mathematician who is tweaking noses in the lofty world of art appraisal by using computers to scan Rembrandt paintings and digitally break them down into glorified spreadsheets to prove or disprove their authenticity. He says that the intuitive things that appraisers and experts look for—the density, length, direction of a stroke, along with other variables unique to one painter—is really just a big math problem that can be solved with the right software.

Naturally, this has thrown the fear of god into some boffinesque people, who are having visions of their jobs, like so many loyal human employees before them, replaced by a machine. But the stakes are high, and the finances even higher, as the number of genuine Rembrandts, once counted around 700, continues to drop (it’s less than 350 now). As the scarcity rises, prices are going up for the genuine article, so techniques with the whiff of objective, chilly science about them have increasing appeal for collectors with money on the line.

LINK: Wired > The Rembrandt Code