26 | MAA FOCUS | October/November 2009 Join Us in San Francisco, CA Joint Mathematics Meetings January 13-16, 2010 Dear Colleagues, he 2010 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco Tpromises to be an exciting gathering. It comes on the heels of MathFest in Portland and the Joint Meetings in Washing- ton, DC that each set a record for the highest attendance ever. The MAA invited speakers will be Manjul Bhargava, Lenore Blum, David Kung, Glen Van Brummelen, Dusa McDuff, and Sue Whitesides. Cliff Stoll will give the student MAA presenta- tion. Joseph Harris and Brian White are the joint MAA-AMS speakers, and this year we will get to hear Steven Strogatz give the first MAA-AMS-SIAM public lecture, which was post- poned from last year. The San Francisco meeting will again feature the AMS invited lectures, the popular Mathematical Art Exhibit, the Undergraduate Poster Session (which last year drew almost 300 presenters), and the heavily-attended Graduate School Fair for undergraduates. The six MAA Invited Paper Sessions include one on Environmental Mathematics and one on the Mathematics of Origami, with Erik Demaine and Robert Lang among the speakers. Tom Banchoff and Jacqueline Dewar will host a joint MAA-AMS Invited Paper Session on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Mathematics. There will be lots of interesting mathematics as well as opportunities to learn new things, meet new people, see old friends, and have a great time. Please join the festivities. I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco. David Bressoud MAA President Photograph by Jerry Lee Hayes for the San Francisco Convention Bureau. MAA FOCUS | October/November 2009 October/November 2009 | MAA FOCUS | 27 MAA-AMS-SIAM Gerald and according to Wikipedia, he has claimed that nothing he thinks about could not have been imagined by the geom- Judith Porter Public Lecture eters of the classical Italian school. He has had at least 37 PhD students, including Ravi Vakil (the Hedrick Lecturer The Calculus of Friendship at the 2009 MathFest). His talk will focus on the problem Steven Strogatz of interpolation by a polynomial. For polynomials in one Cornell University variable, it is well known that given a set of points, one can Saturday, January 16 find a polynomial in one variable with specified values at 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. those points. One can even specify derivatives of any order. Harris’s talk will focus on the problem of extending this to teven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould the case of polynomials in several variables. SSchurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He is Title to be announced fascinated by the hidden mathematics of Brian White nature and the everyday world. He and Stanford University his students have explored the geometry of supercoiled DNA; the nonlinear dynamics of language death; rian White is Professor of Mathematics at Stanford the network structure behind “six degrees of separation,” and the University. His research interests are in differential synchronous flashing of fireflies. Strogatz has received numerous B geometry and geometric measure theory. He received awards including the 2007 JPBM Communications Award. His his PhD at Princeton in 1982, working under Frederick book Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order was named Almgren. a Best Book of 2003 by Discover Magazine. His Public Lecture at the Joint Meetings is based on his latest book, The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned About Life While Corresponding About Math (Princeton MAA Invited Addresses University Press, 2009). It tells the story of an extraordinary con- nection between a high school teacher, Don Joffray, and his for- mer student, Strogatz, as chronicled through more than 30 years The Factorial Function, of letters between them. What makes their relationship unique Integer-valued is that it is based almost entirely on a shared love of calculus. For Polynomials, and p-adic them, calculus is more than a branch of mathematics; it is a game Calculus they love playing together, a constant when all else is in flux. The Manjul Bhargava teacher goes from the prime of his career to retirement, competes Princeton University in whitewater kayaking at the international level, and loses a son. Wednesday, January 13 The student matures from high school math geek to Ivy League 3:20 p.m. – 4:10 p.m. professor, suffers the sudden death of a parent, and blunders into a marriage destined to fail. Yet through it all they take refuge in the haven of calculus … until a day comes when calculus is no anjul Bhargava received longer enough. Like calculus itself, this story is an exploration of Mhis A.B. degree from change. It’s about the transformation that takes place in a stu- Harvard University and a PhD from Princeton University in dent’s heart, as he and his teacher reverse roles, as they age, as they 2001. After spending a year each at Harvard and the Insti- are buffeted by life itself. tute for Advanced Study (on a Clay Research Fellowship), he joined the Princeton faculty as Professor of Mathematics in 2003. Bhargava’s research interests include algebraic number MAA-AMS Invited Addresses theory, representation theory, and combinatorics, though he also spends much of his time on algebraic geometry, linguis- The Interpolation Problem tics, mathematics education, and Indian classical music. A versatile speaker, he has given numerous seminars, colloquia, Joseph Harris invited addresses, and public lectures at colleges and universi- Harvard University ties across North America and Europe. oe Harris received his PhD from Harvard University in 1978 Bhargava’s other honors include the AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank Junder Phillip Griffiths. He is now Higgins Professor of Math- and Brennie Morgan Prize in 1997, the MAA Merten Hasse ematics at Harvard. He is the author of several books on algebraic Prize for mathematical exposition in 2003, the AMS Blumen- geometry and is known as a wonderful teacher and lecturer. Har- thal Award for the Advancement of Research in Pure Math- ris’s research in algebraic geometry has a strong classical flavor: ematics in 2004, a Packard Foundation Fellowship in 2004, 28 | MAA FOCUS | October/November 2009 the Clay Research Award in 2005, the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize on differential geometry and topology; most recently, she has in 2005, and the AMS Cole Prize in 2008. In 2002, Bhargava was focused on symplectic topology. McDuff’s talk will focus on named to Popular Science magazine’s first list of “Brilliant 10,” an embedding problems, which she says “lie at the heart of sym- annual celebration of ten scientists who are shaking up their fields. plectic geometry.” Her talk will start with a general discussion of such problems, mentioning various recent generalizations The Real Computation of Gromov’s nonsqueezing theorem and of the symplectic Controversy: capacities introduced by Ekeland and Hofer. It will end with a description of McDuff’s recent joint work with Schlenk about Is it Real? embedding four-dimensional ellipsoids, which turns out to Lenore Blum have interesting connections with the properties of continued Carnegie Mellon University fractions. Wednesday, January 13 2:15 p.m. – 3:05 p.m. Reasonable Effectiveness: Trigonometry, Ancient enore Blum is Distinguished Career LProfessor of Computer Science at Astronomy, and the Birth Carnegie Mellon. She received her PhD of Applied Mathematics in mathematics from MIT in 1968 (the year in which Princeton Glen Van Brummelen first allowed women into their graduate program). Her research, Quest University from her early work in model theory and differential fields (logic Thursday, January 14 and algebra) to her more recent work in developing a theory of 9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. computation and complexity over the real numbers (mathemat- ics and computer science), has focused on merging seemingly len Van Brummelen is a unrelated areas. In 2005, she received the US Presidential Award Ghistorian of ancient and for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Men- medieval mathematics and toring for her over 35 years of creating programs to increase the astronomy. His The Mathematics of the Heavens and the participation of women in scientific and technical fields including Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry is the first book of the Expanding Your Horizons conferences for middle school girls its kind in a century, spanning four cultures and illustrat- and several others. She has served the professional community ing the interaction between mathematics and its early client in numerous capacities including as President of the Association disciplines astronomy and geography. His research focuses for Women in Mathematics and Vice-President of the American on the interactions between theory and practice among the Mathematical Society. earliest practitioners of numerical and applied mathematics, particularly those who implemented Ptolemaic models of the Blum’s talk will discuss the two major “competing” approaches to heavenly bodies. He is past president of the Canadian Society modeling computation over the reals, the algebraic approach and for History and Philosophy of Mathematics. Finally, he is the bit model approach, each of which, she argues, provides useful coordinator of mathematics and a founding faculty member insights. In her talk, she will discuss how, with regard to computa- at Quest University, the first private secular liberal arts college tional complexity, the two approaches are naturally linked via the in Canada. condition of a problem instance, introduced by Turing in 1948. The work done during the past decade pursuing this direction will be discussed. Excursions in Geometry and Theoretical Computer Science Symplectic Embeddings and Sue Whitesides Continued Fractions University of Victoria Friday, January 15, 9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. Dusa McDuff Barnard College, Columbia University Saturday, January 16, 10:05 a.m.