2016 Maseeh Lecture
Dr. Efim Zelmanov, UC San Diego
The Algebra of Connectivity: coding and networks
Abstract: Many students in algebra courses ask the same question: "how is algebra useful in real life?" In this talk, we relate some of the most abstract algebraic constructions to some of the most applicable questions of our modern world: coding and connected networks.
2014 Maseeh Lecture
Dr. Luis Caffarelli, University of Texas at Austin
Navier Stokes and related equations
Abstract: The Navier Stokes equation is a mathematical model that describes (in a very coarse way) the flow of a viscous fluid in a given "container" or through a given "configuration". Nowadays, it is used systematically as one of the components in large numerical simulations of complex phenomena. Nevertheless, the understanding of its properties is incomplete and a big scientific challenge.
2012 Maseeh Lecture
Sir Michael Berry, University of Bristol
Making light of mathematics
Abstract: Many ‘mathematical phenomena’ find application and sometimes spectacular physical illustration in the physics of light. Concepts such as fractals, catastrophe theory, knots, infinity, zero, and even when 1+1 fails to equal 2, are needed to understand rainbows, twinkling starlight, sparkling seas, oriental magic mirrors, and simple observations on interference, polarization and focusing. The lecture is intellectual but nontechnical, and strongly visual.
2011 Maseeh Lecture
Dr. David Bressoud, Macalester College, Past President, Mathematical Association of America (MAA)
Calculus in High School: Too much of a good thing
Abstract: Over the past quarter century, high school enrollment in calculus has grown tenfold, from 60,000 to 600,000, and continues to grow at 6% per year. We have passed the cross-over point where each year more students study first semester calculus in US high schools than in all 2- and 4-year colleges and universities in the United States. In theory, this should be an engine for directing more students toward careers in science, engineering, and mathematics. In fact, it is having the opposite effect. This talk will present an overview of the history of AP Calculus program, data on its effectiveness and the effects of this growth, and a description of the responses that are needed within our high schools and universities.
Bio: David Bressoud is a DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College and a former president of the Mathematical Association of America. He chaired the AP Calculus Development Committee (which sets the syllabus and writes the exams) from 2002 to 2005. He has served in the Peace Corps in Antigua, West Indies, and taught at Penn State for 17 years. He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Minnesota, Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France), and the State College Area High School.
David has received the MAA Distinguished Teaching Award (Allegheny Mountain Section), the MAA Beckenbach Book Award for Proofs and Confirmations, and has been a Pólya Lecturer for the MAA. His other books include Factorization and Primality Testing, Second Year Calculus from Celestial Mechanics to Special Relativity, A Radical Approach to Real Analysis, A Radical Approach to Lebesgue's Theory of Integration, and, with Stan Wagon, A Course in Computational Number Theory.
2010 Maseeh Lecture
Dr. Douglas N. Arnold, University of Minnesota
Mathematics that swings: the math behind golf
Abstract: Mathematics is everywhere, and the golf course is no exception. Many aspects of the game of golf can be illuminated or improved through mathematical modeling and analysis. We will discuss a few examples, employing mathematics ranging from simple high school algebra to computational techniques at the frontiers of contemporary research.
Bio: Dr. Douglas N. Arnold is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He is a research mathematician and educator with a strong interest in mathematics in interdisciplinary research and in the public understanding of the role of mathematics. For 2009 and 2010, Prof. Arnold serves as the President of SIAM, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. SIAM is the world's leading professional organization for applied mathematicians and computational scientists. From 2001 through 2008, he was director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA). The IMA is a partnership of the National Science Foundation, the University of Minnesota, and a consortium of participating universities, laboratories, and corporations. Under Arnold's leadership it grew to be the largest mathematics research investment in the history of the National Science Foundation.
Prof. Arnold's research interests include numerical analysis, partial differential equations, mechanics, and in particular, the interplay between these fields. Much of his work concerns the computer solution of partial differential equations, focusing on the development and understanding of methods for simulating physical phenomena ranging from the deformation of elastic plates and shells to the collision of black holes. Around 2002 he initiated the finite element exterior calculus, a new approach to the stability of finite element methods based on geometric and topological structure underlying the relevant partial differential equations. The development of the finite element exterior calculus is a major direction of his current research work.
Prof. Arnold was awarded inn 1991 the first International Giovanni Sacchi Landriani Prize by the Lombardy Institute Academy of Arts and Letters in 1991 for "outstanding contributions to the field of numerical methods for partial differential equations." He is highly sought after as a speaker and has delivered plenary lectures at the International Congress of Mathematicians (Beijing 2002) and the Joint Mathematics Meetings (Washington, DC, 2009). In 2008 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2009 he was elected a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
2008 Maseeh Lecture
Sir John Ball, University of Oxford
Poincaré, Perelman and Prizes"
Abstract: In August 2006 the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman refused to accept the Fields Medal awarded to him by the International Mathematical Union at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. He had been awarded the Medal, regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize, because of his ground-breaking work on the Poincaré conjecture, one of the most famous open problems of mathematics. The lecture will describe the conjecture, the unusual events surrounding its proof, and how this unfolding story of mathematics and personalities attracted unprecedented worldwide media attention.
Bio: Sir John Ball is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Fellow of The Queen's College. He has held Visiting Professorships at the University of California at Berkeley; the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris; the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and at the University of Montpellier II.
Professor Ball is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Other awards include the 1990 Keith Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the 1995 Naylor Prize in Applied Mathematics of the London Mathematical Society, the 1999 Theodore Von Karman Prize of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the 2003 David Crighton Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the London Mathematical Society . He was President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society from 1989-90, and of the London Mathematical Society from 1996-1998. He was President of the International Mathematical Union from 2002-2006, and chaired the Fields Medal Committee which awarded Perelman the Fields Medal in 2006.
Professor Ball's main research areas lie in elasticity theory, the calculus of variations, and infinite-dimensional dynamical systems. He is especially interested in the mathematics of microstructure arising from phase transformations in solids, where the problem of predicting microstructure morphology is related to deep unsolved questions of the multi-dimensional calculus of variations.
2006 Maseeh Lecture
Dr. Ronald Graham, UC San Diego
Mathematics and Computers: Recent Successes and Insurmountable Challenges
Abstract: There is no question that the recent advent of the modern computer has had a dramatic impact on what mathematicians do and on how they do it. However, there is increasing evidence that many apparently simple problems may in fact be forever beyond any conceivable computer approach. In this talk, I will describe a variety of mathematical problems in which computers have had, may have or will probably never have a significant role in their solutions.
Bio: Professor Graham currently holds the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professorship of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California San Diego and is Chief Scientist at California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology. In 2003 he received the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the American Mathematical Society. He has served as president for both the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, and is Chief Scientist Emeritus of AT&T-Bell Labs. In addition to being an Internet visionary, Professor Graham is listed in the Guinness book of World records for using the highest number ever used in a mathematical proof, a bounding value published in 1977 known as Graham's number. A master juggler, Professor Graham has also served as president of the International Juggler's Association, has appeared on stage with Cirque du Soleil, and written articles on the science of the circus for Discover magazine.