University of Miami
Department of Mathematics
Norman Levinson Professor of Applied Mathematics
M.I.T.
will present
Plane Tilings
Monday, March 21, 2011, 5:00pm
The Wesley Center, 1210 Stanford Drive
Reception immediately following the lecture
All interested persons are welcome to attend.
Abstract: We will discuss tilings of regions of the plane using prescribed pieces (tiles). A familiar non-mathematical example is a jigsaw puzzle. We will consider such questions as the following. Is there a tiling? If so, how many? If we can't say exactly how many tilings there are, is there a good approximation? Is a tiling easy to find? Is it easy to convince someone that a tiling doesn't exist? What does a "typical" tiling look like? How are different tilings related? These questions involve interesting aspects of combinatorics, computer science, logic, algebra, geometry and analysis.
Richard P. Stanley is the Norman Levinson Professor of Applied Mathematics at M.I.T. Professor Stanley has made many pioneering contributions to combinatorics and its connections with such other areas of mathematics as algebraic topology, commutative algebra, and representation theory. He has received numerous awards and distinctions. He was awarded the George Pólya Prize in Applied Combinatorics in 1975 from the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 2001 from the American Mathematical Society, and the Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics in 2003 from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Professor Stanley held a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
The McKnight-Zame Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Jeffry Fuqua, who received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Miami in 1972 under the direction of Professor James McKnight. This lecture series is named in honor of both Professor McKnight and Professor Alan Zame, who was a close mentor of Dr. Fuqua while he was a student at the University of Miami.
For more information contact Dania Puerto at d.puerto@math.miami.edu or 305.284.2575. Parking is available in the Pavia Garage on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami.
