Sessions for Undergraduate Students

I will talk about my life, from elementary school to becoming the Editor in Chief of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. While my history is quite different from that of most mathematicians, I hope that hearing stories about my trials and tribulations can inspire young mathematicians facing their own trials and tribulations to keep at it as I did and become mathematicians who can then tell their own stories to the next generation of young mathematicians. This talk will include a little bit of knot theory, a little bit of spatial graph theory, a little bit of chemistry, and a little bit of humor. But mostly, it will just be stories.

Erica Flapan was a professor at Pomona College from 1986 to 2018. In addition to teaching at Pomona College, for most of the summers from 2000 until 2015, Flapan taught at the Summer Mathematics Program for freshmen and sophomore women at Carleton College. In 2011, Flapan won the Mathematical Association of America’s Haimo award for distinguished college or university teaching of mathematics. Then in 2012, she was selected as an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society. From 2015-2017, she was a Polya Lecturer for the MAA. Since January 2019, she has been the Editor in Chief of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Erica Flapan has published extensively in topology and its applications to chemistry and molecular biology. In addition to her many research papers, she has published an article in the College Mathematics Journal entitled “How to be a good teacher is an undecidable problem,” as well as three books. Her first book, entitled ``When Topology Meets Chemistry" was published jointly by the Mathematical Association of America and Cambridge University Press. Flapan also co-authored a textbook entitled ``Number Theory: A Lively Introduction with Proofs, Applications, and Stories" with James Pommersheim and Tim Marks, published by John Wiley and sons. Finally, in 2016, the AMS published her book entitled “Knots, Molecules, and the Universe: An Introduction to Topology”, which she wrote in collaboration with 12 mathematicians from all over the country.

In our recent paper in the Monthly (October, 2019) with Pante Stănică, we looked at perfect squares which arise when concatenating two consecutive positive integers like 183184 = 428² with the smaller number to the left, or 98029801 = 9901² with the larger number to the left. My talk will present variations on this topic with the aim of providing the audience with examples of numbers which are both arithmetically interesting (like perfect squares) while their digital representations obey some regular patterns. The examples will not be limited to perfect squares, but will also include other old friends like Fibonacci numbers and palindromes.

We all know there are lots of fun games and activities that come from a standard deck of cards. As they say during 3 a.m. infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!!” A deck is also the gateway to a myriad of different ideas in mathematics. In this event we start with some of the more straightforward ideas like counting and then move on to some other fun things that we can play with. If you have a deck of cards, keep them handy.

Robert Vallin earned his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1991, studying classical real analysis. Since then he has gone on to publish in analysis, topology, number theory (accidentally), and several other topics. Several years ago he took a minicourse in mathematical card magic and became hooked on recreational mathematics. He is founder and chair of the SIGMAA on Recreational Mathematics and involved in both the Gathering for Gardner and the MOVES (Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects) conferences. He is currently a professor at Lamar University in Beaumont, TX, where he has learned to really dislike hurricanes.