MAA Distinguished Lecture Series
Past Lectures
Michael Starbird, University of Texas at Austin - March 19, 2009
"The Fourth Dimension"
The fourth dimension sounds eerie, mysterious, and exciting; and it is. Untying knots, stealing gold bricks from closed iron safes, unfolding hypercubes and linking spheres are all part of the journey.
We are transported to this abstract domain by a powerful method of creating ideas, namely, thinking insightfully about the world that we know well. A deep understanding of the simple and familiar is the key to exploring the complex and mysterious, and the fourth dimension illustrates that principal magnificently.
Michael Starbird is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas at Austin and a member of UT’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He received his B.A. degree from Pomona College and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been in the Department of Mathematics of UT except for leaves including one to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and one to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
He has received more than a dozen teaching awards including several that are awarded to only one professor at UT annually and including the Mathematical Association of America’s 2007 national teaching award. He is a popular lecturer, having presented more than a hundred invited lectures since 2000. Starbird’s books include, with co-author Edward B. Burger, the award-winning mathematics textbook for liberal arts students The Heart of Mathematics: An invitation to effective thinking and the trade book Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas. With David Marshall and Edward Odell he co-authored Number Theory Through Inquiry. His Teaching Company video courses in the Great Courses Series include Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear, Meaning From Data: Statistics Made Clear, What are the Chances? Probability Made Clear, and Mathematics from the Visual World. These courses reach tens of thousands of people in the general public annually. In 1989, Starbird was UT’s Recreational Sports Super Racquets Champion.
Andrew Granville, University of Montreal - November 13, 2008
"Patterns in the Primes"
Primes are the building blocks from which the integers are made, and so it is of interest to understand how they are distributed. Questions abound:
How many primes are there?
How many primes are there up to a given point?
Is there a good formula that tells us what is a prime and what is not?
Is there a way to find out quickly whether a given integer is prime?
How many primes are there in certain patterns?
Do polynomials take on many prime values?
How about consecutive prime values?
How are primes spaced?
Versions of some of these questions are considered to be among the most difficult open problems in mathematics. On the other hand there has been spectacular recent progress on several of these questions. We will discuss all this and more in this lecture.
Andrew Granville is the Canadian Research Chair in number theory at the University of Montreal. He specializes in analytic number theory and especially properties of prime numbers. His recent research has centered around the (mathematical) notion of "pretentiousness". His awards include the Presidential Faculty Fellowship from President Clinton in 1994, and the Chauvenet Prize (from the MAA) in 2008, he gave the Erdos Memorial lecture of the American Mathematical Society, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2007.
Rebecca Goldin, George Mason University - October 28, 2008
"Spinning Heads and Spinning News: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in the Media"
News increasingly depends on a careful dissection of numbers. Statistics are everywhere, from how many people lack health insurance to how to improve math education. Yet for being so prevalent, statistics are badly understood by the general public.
Mark Twain popularized the quote that "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." While this quote suggests the scary idea that statistics can be manipulated to say anything, I will argue that statistics can tell us lots of useful things when used appropriately, and that the more the media does this for us, the more educated we can be as news consumers, and the better we will be at truly evaluating risk for ourselves and others.
In this talk, I'll illustrate how the press can misuse and even abuse statistics using examples of news coverage. Since news sources are the main avenue by which the public understands many public health issues, these misguided representations of science can actually shape public policy, legislation, and individual choices. We will see why it is so important that media writers understand basic concepts from statistics, epidemiology and even toxicology. I will also show how powerful the work can be when the press goes beyond politics and morality to point out what science says, what it doesn't, and what it can't.
Rebecca Goldin is a professor of mathematics at George Mason University. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard, and her PhD from MIT. She taught at University of Maryland as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow before joining George Mason in 2001. She currently serves as the Director of Research for Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a nonprofit media education and watchdog group affiliated with George Mason. When she's not thinking about statistics in the media, she's pursuing her research interests in group actions on manifolds and symplectic geometry. Last year, Goldin won the Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize for mathematics.
Ruth Charney, Brandeis University - October 14, 2008
"Modeling with Cubes"
Children build models with 3-dimensional cubes. Mathematicians build them with higher dimensional cubes. Many physical systems can be represented by geometric models based on cubes. Using an example from robotics, we will investigate how such models are constructed and what can we learn from their strange, but beautiful geometry.
Ruth Charney is Professor of Mathematics at Brandeis University. She received her undergraduate degree from Brandeis and her PhD from Princeton. She taught at Berkeley, Yale, and Ohio State University before returning to her alma mater in 2003. She currently serves as Chair of her department and as a Vice President of the American Mathematical Society. She was never sure whether she was a topologist or an algebraist, and is now happily immersed in geometric group theory, a combination of the two.
Read about Ruth Charney's Lecture
Martin Golubitsky, Mathematical Biosciences Institute, Ohio State University - August 21, 2008
"Patterns Patterns Everywhere"
Regular patterns appear all around us: from vast geological formations to the ripples in a vibrating coffee cup, from the gaits of trotting horses to tongues of flames, and even in visual hallucinations. The mathematical notion of symmetry is a key to understanding how and why these patterns form. In this lecture Professor Golubitsky will show some of these fascinating patterns and explain how mathematical symmetry enters the picture.
Martin Golubitsky is Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the Ohio State University, where, beginning in September, he will serve as Director of the Mathematical Biosciences Institute. He received his PhD in Mathematics from M.I.T. in 1970 and has been Professor of Mathematics at Arizona State University and Cullen Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston.
Dr. Golubitsky works in the fields of nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation theory studying the role of symmetry in the formation of patterns in physical systems and the role of network architecture in the dynamics of coupled systems. His recent research focuses on some mathematical aspects of biological applications: animal gaits, the visual cortex, the auditory system, and coupled systems. He has co-authored four graduate texts, one undergraduate text, two nontechnical trade books, (Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer with Ian Stewart and Symmetry in Chaos with Michael Field) and over 100 research papers.
Dr. Golubitsky is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a past President of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Keith Devlin, Stanford University - July 2, 2008
"When Mathematics Changed the World"
At four distinct stages in the development of modern society, mathematics (in particular, acquisition of the ability to carry out new kinds of computation) changed in a fundamental, dramatic, and revolutionary way how we humans understand the world and live our lives.
The fourth such change is taking place during our lifetime, brought about by the invention of machines that can be instructed to compute for us. The others occurred in 8,000 B.C., the 13th century, and the 17th century. I'll look at how human life and cognition changed at each of those three stages.
Read about Keith Devlin's Lecture
Karl Rubin, University of California, Irvine - May 16, 2008
"Right Triangles and Elliptic Curves"
Which natural numbers occur as the area of a right triangle with three rational sides? This is a very old question and is still unsolved, although partial answers are known (for example, five is the smallest such natural number). In this talk we will discuss this problem and recent progress that has come about through its connections with other important open questions in number theory.
Karl Rubin is the Thorp Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine. His research deals with elliptic curves and other aspects of number theory. Rubin attended Washington DC public schools, was a Putnam Fellow as an undergraduate at Princeton, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard. He was a professor at Ohio State, Columbia, and Stanford before moving to UC Irvine in 2004. Rubin received the Cole Prize in Number Theory from the American Mathematical Society, a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator award, a Humboldt Research Award, and Guggenheim and Sloan fellowships.
Margaret Wright, New York University - March 5, 2008
"What Can We Say After We Say We're Sorry? or, Adventures in Optimization"
Mathematicians believe, correctly, that they are uniquely
qualified to answer complicated questions in science and engineering.
But it very often happens that such problems are unsolvable or
intractable in their original form. Is it acceptable to say politely
"I'm sorry; this problem is impossible" and then return to answering
questions that can be answered? Or should we do more? How can we do
more? This talk, intended for a general audience, will describe, with
examples from the speaker's experiences in optimization, how
mathematicians can become local heroes after they say they're sorry.
Margaret H. Wright is Silver Professor of Computer Science and
Mathematics and chair of the Computer Science Department in the Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. She received
her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her research
interests include optimization, scientific computing, and real-world
applications. Prior to joining NYU, she worked at Bell Laboratories
(AT&T/Lucent Technologies) and Stanford University. She was elected
to the National Academy of Engineering (1997), the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences (2001), and the National Academy of Sciences (2005).
During 1995-1996 she served as president of the Society for Industrial
and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).
Ravi Vakil, Stanford University - December 6, 2007
"The Mathematics of Doodling"
Doodling has many mathematical aspects: patterns, shapes,
numbers, and more. Not surprisingly, there is often some
sophisticated
and fun mathematics buried inside common doodles. Vakil will
begin by
doodling, and there is no telling where it could take him.
Ravi Vakil is Professor of
Mathematics at Stanford University. He was born in Toronto,
Canada,
and studied at the University of Toronto, where he was a four-time
winner of the Putnam
competition (``Putnam Fellow''). He received his Ph.D. from
Harvard
in 1997, and taught at Princeton and MIT before moving to Stanford in
2001. He is an algebraic geometer, and his work involves many
other
parts of mathematics, including topology, string theory, applied
mathematics, combinatorics, number theory, and more. His awards
include the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the National Science
Foundation CAREER Award, the American Mathematical Society Centennial
Fellowship, the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the
Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He
works extensively with talented younger mathematicians at all levels,
from high school (through math circles, camps, and olympiads), through
recent Ph.D.'s. Vakil runs a problem-solving seminar each
fall for Stanford
undergraduates, involving up to 150 students, as well as a masterclass
for experts. He is also the faculty advisor to the Stanford
Math
Circle. You can read more at Prof. Vakil's Home Page.
David Bressoud, Macalester College - September 19, 2007
"Proofs and Confirmations: The Story of the Alternating Sign Matrix Conjecture"
What is the role of proof in
mathematics? Most of the
time, the search for proof is less about establishing truth than it is
about exploring unknown territory. In finding a route from what
is known to the result one believes is out there, the mathematician
often encounters unexpected insights into seemingly unrelated problems.
I will illustrate this point with an example of recent research into a
generalization of the permutation matrix known as the "alternating sign
matrix." This is a story that began with Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis
Carroll), matured at the Institute for Defense Analysis, drew in
researchers from combinatorics, analysis, and algebra, and ultimately
was solved with insights from statistical mechanics. This talk is
intended for a general audience and should be accessible to anyone
interested in a window into the true nature of research in mathematics.
David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester
College. He served in the Peace Corps, teaching math and science at the
Clare Hall School in Antigua, West Indies before studying with Emil
Grosswald at Temple University and then teaching at Penn State for 17
years, eight of them as full professor. He chaired the Department of
Mathematics and Computer Science at Macalester from 1995 until 2001. 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.
Bernd Sturmfels, University of California, Berkeley - May 17, 2007
"The Joy of Solving Equations"
Gröbner bases are a fun method for solving algebraic equations. See how it works, why it is useful, and what you should do with the change in your pocket.
Bernd Sturmfels received doctoral degrees in Mathematics in 1987 from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany. After two postdoctoral years at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, Minneapolis, and the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation, Linz, Austria, he taught at Cornell University, before joining UC Berkeley in 1995, where he is Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. His honors include a National Young Investigator Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. Sturmfels served as von Neumann Professor at TU Munich in Summer 2002, as the Hewlett-Packard Research Professor at MSRI Berkeley in 2003/04, and he was a Clay Senior Scholar in 2004. A leading experimentalist among mathematicians, Sturmfels has authored or edited 13 books and about 150 research articles, in the areas of combinatorics, algebraic geometry, symbolic computation and their applications. He currently works on algebraic methods in statistics and computational biology.
Trachette L. Jackson, University of Michigan - March 13, 2007
"Building Models of Tumor Heterogeneity: Insights into Prostate Cancer and the Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis"It is now appreciated that cancers can be composed of multiple clonal subpopulations of cancer cells which differ among themselves in many properties, including, growth rate, ability to metastasize, immunological characteristics, production and expression of markers, and sensitivity to therapeutic modalities. Such tumor heterogeneity has been demonstrated in a wide variety of tumors, including those that originate in the prostate. In an effort to assist in the understanding of recurrent prostate cancer and the cellular processes which mediate this disease, I will present a mathematical model that describes both the pre-treatment growth and the post-therapy relapse of human prostate cancer xenografts. The goal is to evaluate the interplay between the multiple mechanisms which have been postulated as causes of androgen-independent relapse. At the end of the the talk, I will also comment on possible causes of tumor heterogeneity including the Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis.
Trachette Jackson is an associate professor at the University of Michigan. She received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1998 from the University of Washington. Her research interests focus on applying mathematics to modeling the growth and control of cancer. Professor Jackson has held post doctoral positions at Duke University, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota, and the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory of the Environmental Protection Agency. She is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation. At the University of Michigan she received the Amoco Faculty Undergraduate Teaching Award. She is currently a Co-PI on an NSF grant for a program that will allow undergraduate students to develop knowledge and acquire skills in research areas that are at the interface of Biology and Mathematics. Professor Jackson is a frequent invited lecturer at conferences and universities.
Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University - February 20, 2007
"The Many Paths of Alternating Paths"
I will present five combinatorial gems where alternating paths play a major role.
Doron Zeilberger is a Board of Governors Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University. He is widely known for the development of "WZ" (Wilf-Zeilberger) Theory and Zeilberger's algorithm that are used extensively in modern computer algebra software. Zeilberger was the first to prove the elusive result in combinatorial theory known as the alternating sign matrix conjecture. Among his honors are: the MAA Lester R. Ford award for a paper in the American Mathematical Monthly; the American Mathematical Society Steele Prize for seminal contributions to research (co-recipient with Herb Wilf); the Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications Euler Medal for "Outstanding Contributions to Combinatorics;" the Laura H. Carnell Professorship at Temple University; in the spirit of Paul Erdos, challenge cash prizes from Richard Askey, George Andrews and Ron Graham; and Persi Diaconis's favorite living mathematician!
The citaton for the Euler Medal describes him as "a champion of using computers and algorithms to do mathematics quickly and efficiently." In his opinion "programming is even more fun than proving, and, more importantly it gives as much, if not more, insight and understanding."
Larry Schumaker, Vanderbilt University - January 25, 2007
"Spline Functions and their Impact"
I will describe the explosive development of splines and their application over the past 40 years. Splines are piecewise polynomials which are extremely useful in approximation theory and numerical analysis for fitting and approximating functions. They have also found applications in many areas of business, engineering, medicine, science, and elsewhere. I will discuss some of these applications. The talk will be quite general with little mathematical background needed.
Dr. Schumaker is a Stevenson Professor at Vanderbilt University. His research areas include approximation theory and computer aided graphical design. He is an author or co-author of 37 books or proceedings. He has been the advisor of 21 Ph.D. students. Dr. Schumaker has won the Alexander von Humboldt Prize and he has been elected a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.