With 2007 dubbed the "Year of Euler," the Euler lecture at this year's MathFest takes on added significance. To mark the great mathematician's 300th birthday, the Euler Society has invited William Dunham of Muhlenberg College to present a talk titled Euler in Three Acts. The session will take place at 1 p.m., on Sunday, Aug. 5.
In his three-part look at Euler's vast body of mathematical work, Dunham will provide an overview of Euler's life, discuss the "Euler product-sum formula" and its relation to the birth of analytic number theory, and talk about Euler's evaluation of a non-trivial integral (with help from two of his most famous predecessors).
The Euler Society was founded in 2002 and actively encourages the study of Euler's life, his mathematics, and his enduring influence on both his own generation and future generations of mathematicians. Meeting this year at Mathfest, the society has sessions devoted to invited and contributed papers and to readings from original sources.—R. Miller
Other MathFest highlights:
Robert Schneider on Math, Music, and Psychedelic Rock
Daniel Goldston and the Revenge of the Twin Prime Conjecture
Jennifer Tour Chayes on the Mathematics of Dynamic Random Networks
Donald E. Knuth on "Negative" Fibonacci Numbers
Flatland: The Movie
Register for MathFest at http://www.maa.org/mathfest.