University of Oregon: Department of Mathematics

Niven Lectures

April 21-22 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, 208 Deady.
Undergraduate lecture (likely to be interesting to graduate students too), "Juggling Patterns and Gaussian Elimination", noon, 301 Deady.

Here are the abstracts.

April 11-12 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, April 11, 2007
Lecture 2: Secondary differential-geometric invariants, generalized cohomology, and QCD
4:00 p.m., Thursday, April 12, 2007

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

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

May 24-25 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, May 24, 2004, 208 Deady Hall
Lecture 2: Sums of squares
12:00 p.m., Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 229 McKenzie Hall

October 14-15 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, October 14, 2002, 110 Fenton Hall
Lecture 2: What's new about polyhedra and polytopes?
4:00 p.m., Tuesday, October 15, 2002, 110 Fenton Hall

May 8-10 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, May 8, 2000, 110 Fenton Hall
Lecture 2: Ramanujan, continued fractions and teaching mathematics
4:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 10, 2000, 210 Deady Hall

April 26-28 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, April 26, 1999, 110 Fenton Hall
Lecture 2: Free resolutions over exterior algebras
4:00 p.m., Tuesday, April 27, 1999, 210 Deady Hall
Lecture 3: How to take a walk using a commutative algebra
12:00 p.m., Wednesday, April 28, 1999, 210 Deady Hall