Mathematician, Magician, Artist Delivers Conference Keynote
KEENE, N.H., 4/13/10 - Keene State College will host the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (HRUMC) on Saturday, April 17. Throughout the day faculty and undergraduate students will present talks (given in parallel sessions) on all areas of mathematics, as well as math history, math education, computer science, and statistics. MIT Professor Eric Demaine will give the keynote address, “Algorithms meet Art, Puzzles, and Magic,” starting at 11:05 a.m. in the Mabel Brown room of the KSC Student Center. The conference is free and open to the public.
Professor Demaine is an Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Professor and associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Theory of Computation group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an artist, magician, glassblower, actor, and mathematician and was recently featured in a PBS program on origami. Demaine writes that “through other media such as sculpture, puzzles, and magic, the beauty of mathematics can be brought to a wider audience.” He will integrate several examples into his talk, from showing how our first font design led to a universality result in hinged dissections, to how studying curved creases in origami led to sculptures at MoMA. The audience will be expected to participate in live magic demonstrations.
While the conference is primarily geared for undergraduates, anyone with a general knowledge of mathematics at the high school level or above will find many interesting and accessible talks. Registration is onsite at the David F. Putnam Science Center from 8:30-9:50 a.m. The first session begins at 10 a.m. in the David F. Putnam Science Center and Huntress Hall. After lunch in the dining commons, there will be two more sessions of talks in the afternoon. More information about the conference can be found at www.skidmore.edu/hrumc.htm and the full schedule can be found at https://apps.skidmore.edu/pls/apex/f?p=115:8:8345225 72109479. More information on Erik Demaine can be found at http://erikdemaine.org/.
