Bernard Lecture
The major mathematical event of the year is the annual Bernard
Lecture, supported by the department's Richard R. Bernard Endowment.
The 2006 Bernard Lecture,
Mathematical Crystals and Quasicrystals,
will be given by Prof.
Jeffrey Lagarias
of the University of Michigan.
Mathematical crystals refer to a way of tiling a space, or a way to fill a space by using one, or a few, simple objects or shapes.
They can be seen in everyday objects such as salt, diamonds, and quartz.
The perfect regularity of the crystal material produces very predictable responses to heat, electrical stimulation,
or vibrations, making them valuable in manufactured items like quartz watches.
Quasi-crystals, discovered by physicists in 1982, are materials that exhibit regularity in their atomic arrangements,
but are not perfectly periodic like the other examples.
Lagarias notes,
"Understanding the structure of such materials leads to many interesting mathematical questions, which include new questions about crystalline structures.
Recent developments give new information about the threshold between crystallinity and aperiodic order."
Professor Jeffrey Lagarias received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974.
In 1975 he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a member of the technical staff,
and from 1995 to 2004 he was a Technology Consultant at AT&T Research Laboratories.
Subsequent to this he joined the mathematics faculty at the University of Michigan.
He has held visiting positions at the University of Maryland (mathematics),
Rutgers University (computer science), and the University of Paris 7 (physics),
and he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
While his recent work has been in theoretical computer science,
Prof. Lagarias' original training was in analytic algebraic number theory.
He has since worked in many areas, both pure and applied,
and considers himself a mathematical generalist.
His interests include discrete geometry, dynamical systems,
harmonic analysis (wavelets), low-dimensional topology,
mathematical optimization, mathematical physics, number theory,
and operations research.
The Lecture is free and open to the public, and begins at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 15, in the C. Shaw Smith 900 Room of the
Knobloch Campus Center.
2006 - Professor Jeffrey Lagarias
University of Michigan
("Mathematical Crystals and Quasicrystals")
2005 - Professor Ronald Graham
University of California, San Diego
("Searching for the Shortest Network")
poster
2004 - Professor Georgia Benkart
University of Wisconsin
("Ladies of the Ring: A Tale of Two Women and Their Mathematics")
poster
2003 - Professor Edward Scheinerman
Johns Hopkins University
("Mathematics Through Games")
poster
2002 - Professor Underwood Dudley
DePauw University
("Why Teach Mathematics?")
poster
2001 - Professor Emeritus Carl Pomerance
University of Georgia & Bell Laboratories ("Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Paul Erdos, and Me")
2000 - Professor Lenore Blum
Carnegie Mellon University ("Complexity and Real
Computation--Where Turing Meets Newton")
1999 - Dr. William R. Pulleyblank
Director of Mathematical Sciences in IBM's Research
Division and Director of the IBM Deep Computing Institute ("Duality and
Mathematical Optimization")
1998 - Professor Maynard Thompson
Indiana University ("Stratified Population Models and
Applications in Ecology")
1997 - Professor David Bressoud
Macalester College ("Alternating Sign Matrix Conjecture")
1996 - Professor Robert Bryant
Duke University ("The Notions of Area and Volume and
Geometry: From the Greeks to the Moderns")
1995 - Professor William Dunham
Muhlenberg College ("A Tribute to Euler"), author of
Journey Through Genius, The Mathematical Universe, and Euler: Master
of Us All
1994 - Professor Robert Devaney
Boston University ("The Fractal Geometry of the Mandelbrot Set ")
1993 - Professor Brian White
Stanford University ("On Beyond Infinity")
1992 - Professor Victor Klee
The University of Washington, Seattle ("Some Unsolved
Problems in Intuitive Geometry")
