NEWS

The first Spring Term Mathematics Society Meeting will be

 

Wednesday May 2 at 6 PM in Kemeny 006

Speaker: Professor Craig Sutton, Mathematics Department, Dartmouth College

Title: Vibrating drums, Cayley graphs and isospectral surfaces

Abstract:  In 1966, Kac asked whether it is possible for a person with perfect pitch to hear the shape of a drum.

That is, he wondered whether two drums which sound exactly the same must be geometrically identical. This question has a natural generalization to surfaces and higher dimensional manifolds. After defining precisely what it means for us to "hear" a drum, surface or manifold, we will then show how Cayley graphs can be used to construct surfaces that sound the same, but are geometrically distinct. If time allows we will also discuss some original work related to this problem done by Seunghee Ye ('10) in his Honors Thesis.

Putnam Training Sessions

Putnam Exam training sessions will resume in Fall 2012. The Putnam Coaches are Vladimir Chernov and Sergi Elizalde

 

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