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The Reese Prosser Memorial Lectures


The Reese Prosser Memorial Lectures were inaugurated in 2002 by the Department of Mathematics at Dartmouth College to honor their long time colleague Reese Prosser. This lecture series was endowed by Nancy Prosser and her family. These lectures are intended to introduce the general public to mathematical research related to their daily lives.

Reese loved mathematics and music. You can see his mathematical contributions here, his music with Nancy here, his sailing here, and some remarks about Reese himself here.

2012: The Mathematics of Crime
Andrea Bertozzi, Director of Applied Mathematics, University of California Los Angeles.

2011: From Democratic Consensus to Cannibalistic Hordes: The Principles of Collective Behavior
Iain Couzin, Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology & Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University.  video QuickTime, Theora, WebM

2010: From the Cosmos to the Quantum:
How Mathematical Theories of Symmetry Grew from and Gave back to Physics
Stephanie Singer. video QuickTime, Theora, WebM

2009: Mathematical Models of Social Media and the News Cycle
Jon Kleinberg, Tisch University Professor, Cornell University. video RealMedia

2008: Unearthing the Visions of a Master: The Legacy of Ramanujan’s Last Letter
Ken Ono, Hilldale Professor of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin. video QuickTime, Theora, WebM

2007: The Riemann Hypothesis: Unsolved Mysteries of the Primes!
J. Brian Conrey, Executive Director, American Institute of Mathematics. video QuickTime, Theora, WebM

2006: Tales of the Dodecahedron: from Pythagoras through Plato to Poincaré
John Baez, University of California, Riverside (slides)

2005: The Modern Mathematics of Motion Capture — from Muybridge through Disney and Beyond
Chris Bregler, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. video QuickTime, Theora, WebM

2004: Artful Mathematics - the quantification of style:
Daniel Rockmore, Dartmouth College. video RealMedia

2003: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order:
Steven Strogatz, Cornell University

2002: Risk and Revolution: Casanova, Napoleon, and the French Lottery.
Stephen Stigler, University of Chicago.