University of Oregon: Department of Mathematics

Niven Lectures

24-25 May 2011

Denis Auroux

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Auroux will present two lectures, the first of which is intended for undergraduates:

Undergraduate lecture: "Seeing into the fourth dimension", Tuesday, 24 May 2011, 4:00 pm in 100 Willamette Hall. Reception to follow in Willamette Hall atrium.
Colloquium lecture: "Building 3-manifold invariants by composing correspondences", Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 4:00 pm in 100 Willamette Hall. Tea from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm in Willamette Hall atrium.

Here are the abstracts.

26-28 April 2010

Alexei Borodin

California Institute of Technology

Professor Borodin will present two lectures, the first of which is intended for undergraduates:

Undergraduate lecture, "Around Longest Increasing Subsequences", Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 4:00 pm in 166 Lawrence Hall.
Colloquium lecture, "Interlacing Particle Systems", Friday, 28 May 2010, 4:00 pm in 208 Deady Hall.

Here is the poster, including the abstracts. (Note that there are mistakes on the poster.)

21-22 April 2008

Allen Knutson

UC San Diego

Professor Knutson will present two lectures, the second of which is intended for undergraduates:

Colloquium lecture, "The Space of Commuting Matrices, and Statistical Mechanics", 4pm, 21 April 2008, 208 Deady.
Undergraduate lecture (likely to be interesting to graduate students too), "Juggling Patterns and Gaussian Elimination", noon, 22 April 2008, 301 Deady.

Here are the abstracts.

11-12 April 2007

Dan Freed

University of Texas at Austin

Professor Freed will present two lectures, the first of which is intended for undergraduates:

Lecture 1: "The geometry and topology of Maxwell's equations".
12:00 p.m., Wednesday, 11 April 2007
Lecture 2: "Secondary differential-geometric invariants, generalized cohomology, and QCD"
4:00 p.m., Thursday, 12 April 2007

28 March - 1 April 2005

Alexandre Kirillov

University of Pennsylvania

Professor Kirillov will present three lectures, the second two of which are undergraduate lectures:

Lecture 1: "A tale on two fractals"
4:00 p.m., Monday, 28 March 2005, 106 Deady Hall
Lecture 2: "Self-similar fractal sets and generalized numerical systems"
12:00 p.m., Wednesday, 30 March 2005, 229 McKenzie Hall
Lecture 3: "Descartes theorem and its generalization"
4:00 p.m., Friday, 1 April 2005, 106 Deady Hall

Here are the abstracts for all three talks (pdf).

24-25 May 2004

Peter Sarnak

Princeton University and Courant Institute

Professor Sarnak will present two lectures, the second of which is intended for undergraduates:

Lecture 1: "The spectrum of the modular surface"
4:00 p.m., Monday, 24 May 2004, 208 Deady Hall
Lecture 2: "Sums of squares"
12:00 p.m., Tuesday, 25 May 2004, 229 McKenzie Hall

14-15 October 2002

John Conway

Princeton University

Professor Conway will present two lectures, the second of which is intended for undergraduates:

Lecture 1: "The 219 space groups"
4:00 p.m., Monday, 14 October 2002, 110 Fenton Hall
Lecture 2: "What's new about polyhedra and polytopes?"
4:00 p.m., Tuesday, 15 October 2002, 110 Fenton Hall

8-10 May 2000

George Andrews

Pennsylvania State University

Professor Andrews will present two lectures, the second of which is intended for undergraduates:

Lecture 1: "Some things Ramanujan may have had up his sleeve"
4:00 p.m., Monday, 8 May 2000, 110 Fenton Hall
Lecture 2: "Ramanujan, continued fractions and teaching mathematics"
4:00 p.m., Wednesday,10 May 2000, 210 Deady Hall

26-28 April 1999

David Eisenbud

Director of MSRI and University of California, Berkeley

Professor Eisenbud will present three lectures, the last of which is intended for undergraduates:

Lecture 1: "What free resolutions (might) teach us about geometry"
4:00 p.m., Monday, 26 April 1999, 110 Fenton Hall
Lecture 2: "Free resolutions over exterior algebras"
4:00 p.m., Tuesday, 27 April 1999, 210 Deady Hall
Lecture 3: "How to take a walk using a commutative algebra"
12:00 p.m., Wednesday, 28 April 1999, 210 Deady Hall