Seminars and Colloquiums
for the week of September 1, 2008
Speakers:
Professor Suzanne Lenhart, Tuesday
Professor Carl Sundberg, Wednesday
Professor Morwen Thistlethwaite, Thursday
Tuesday
MATH ECOLOGY SEMINAR
DATE: September 2, 2008
TIME: 10:10 – 11:00 a.m.
ROOM: 205 Ayres
SPEAKER: Professor Suzanne Lenhart
TITLE: “Introduction to Latin hypercube Sampling”
Wednesday
ANALYSIS SEMINAR
DATE: September 3, 2008
TIME: 3:35 – 4:30 p.m.
ROOM: 309B Ayres
SPEAKER: Professor Carl Sundberg
TITLE: “Rank-One Perturbations of Self-Adjoint Operators, 2”
ALGEBRA SEMINAR
DATE: September 3, 2008
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: 309A Ayres
TITLE: Organizational Meeting
NOTE: All interested in the seminar, especially those registered for the seminar, are urged to attend this organizational meeting.
Thursday
JUNIOR COLLOQUIUM
DATE: September 4, 2008
TIME: 3:40 p.m.
ROOM: 214 Ayres
SPEAKER: Professor Morwen Thistlethwaite
TITLE: “Classification and symmetries of knots”
ABSTRACT: For the topologist, a (classical) knot is a smooth simple closed curve in 3-dimensional space. Two knots are equivalent if one can continuously deform one to the other: stretching and bending are allowed but cutting is prohibited. We can picture a knot as a length of rope with its ends glued together, and with a small amount of practice we can draw pictures of knots, seemingly making the subject approachable. However, knot theory is teeming with problems that are easy to ask and very hard to solve. Even the problem of deciding whether two given knots are equivalent can be tricky, and has caught people out over the years. A very useful approach is to transform a knot theoretical problem into a (hopefully) easier problem in algebra. Some of the simpler algebraic invariants will be presented; the audience is encouraged to bring paper so that they can draw some knots and perform some knot theoretic calculations.
If you are interested in giving or arranging a talk for one of our seminars or colloquiums, please review our calendar.
If you have questions, or a date you would like to confirm, please contact Dr. Steve Wise.
Week of:
Past notices:
Seminars from 2007-2008 academic year
Seminars from 2006-2007 academic year