School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota
Math Club Lectures

Fall 2009

  • Location: 120 Vincent Hall (enclosed area)
  • Time: Thursday at 12:10 pm


    Thursday, September 17: Speaker: Professor Willard Miller and Li Lin,

    Title: Compressive sampling or how to get something from nothing


    Thursday, September 24: Speaker: Professor Marta Lewicka
    Title: Morphogenesis in soft growing tissues -- how leaves and flowers grow and how to do math about it


    Thursday, October 1: Speaker: Professor Peter Webb
    Title: The Beauty of Groups and Symmetry


    Thursday, October 8: Speaker: Dr. Rebecca Schmitz
    Title: TBA

    Something about operator algebras, I think!

    Thursday, October 15: Speaker: John Baxter
    Title: TBA





    Thursday, October 22: Speaker: TBA
    Title: TBA





    Thursday, October 29: Speaker: Dr. Justin Sukiennik
    Title: In Search of Transcendental Numbers

    Abstract: We will briefly look at the historical perspective behind the definition of transcendental numbers leading up to nineteenth century. Then we will prove Joseph Liouville's Theorem on algebraic numbers, which will demonstrate to us that transcendental numbers exist (without using a countable argument). Finally, we will look at some familiar looking numbers which are unknown to be algebraic or transcendental.



    Thursday, November 5: Speaker: Professor Brian Mosher
    Title: Fellow travelers: road trips in Cayley graphs

    If the Cayley graph of a group has a structure that can be described recursively, then paths in the graph enjoy the fellow traveler property: roughly, two paths that start and end near each other must stay near each other along the way. I hope to give an accessible introduction to combinatorial group theory and the automata theory that describes the structure of the Cayley graph.




    Thursday, November 12: Speaker: Jeff Weeks
    Title: Visual Introduction to Hyperbolic Geometry


    Physical models along with 2- and 3-dimensional software simulations introduce students to spherical and hyperbolic geometry.

    Thursday, November 19: Speaker: Dr. Yuriko Renardy
    Title: Collaborative research on a treatment for retinal detachment





    Thursday, December 3: Speaker: Professor Maury Bramson
    Title: TBA