Title: “Making math with yarn and wire”
It was about twenty years ago that the impending birth of my daughter inspired me to start crocheting. After making an almost infinite number of useless shirts and dresses, I moved on to mathematical objects. These objects were inspired by some of the questions that have captured the minds of people interested in mathematics since the mid-1800s. In making the objects, I gained a deeper understanding of the ideas behind them. This new understanding, along with the objects themselves, helped me teach about these ideas.
In this talk, I will talk about the fascinating and intricate history of some of these questions, and present crocheted models of the answers. I will also explain how I switched from crocheting to looping wire and the mathematics of my new wire sculptures.
Bio:
Moira Chas is a professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University. She was born in Argentina in 1965. She discovered a passion for writing early in life, and a passion for mathematics a little later. She received her Licenciatura (something like a master's degree) from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, and her Ph.D. from the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. Shortly after completing her Ph.D., she travelled to the U.S. for a three-month work visit...and never left. She strongly believes in the benefits of teaching through interaction with students. In her work, she tries to find different representations of the concepts she is trying to understand. These representations come in the form of computer programs, pictures, knitted shapes, or wire sculptures. She also believes in communicating mathematics to a wider audience beyond her colleagues and students. She is a recipient of the Godfrey Teaching Excellence Award. She also won the Simons Center Science Playwriting Competition for her play "The Mathematical Visions of Alicia Boole.
She works in low-dimensional topology and is drawn to mathematics that can be expressed through images. Much of her research is rooted in finding and exploring mathematical conjectures with computers. Many of these computational experiments have been done in collaboration with undergraduate, graduate, and high school students. Together with Dennis Sullivan, she discovered and formulated "string topology".
She is working on a book about the remarkable life and work of the geometrician Alicia Boole Stott (1860-1940), who, with very little formal education, classified symmetrical four-dimensional objects and discovered concepts that we still use today.
Another branch of Chas's creative efforts is devoted to making mathematical art using the wire looping technique of American artist Ruth Asawa to bring such mathematical wonders as one-sided surfaces like Klein bottles and Boy's surface into the world of art.
Dr. Moira Chas’ website, https://www.moirart.org/
Date: Monday, March 3, 2024
Time: 1pm-2pm
Location: Special Collections Seminar Room, E-2340, second floor of the Melville Library
Title: "Probing Mystery of Star Formation by Observing Their Parental Sites of Molecular Clouds in Galaxies"
When we look up at the night sky, stars and galaxies appear almost eternal. However, neither stars nor galaxies existed at the beginning of the Universe. In history, the effect of gravitational force gradually developed concentrations of molecular gas, called molecular clouds, where a small portion of the gas converted into stars. The continuous formation of stars in the gas clouds built up galaxies. This process is still underway even in the current Universe. Indeed, we can find molecular clouds and ongoing star formation in the Milky Way galaxy and nearby galaxies. In this presentation, I will discuss the process of star formation, in particular, on the environment for star formation, the formation and evolution of molecular clouds in nearby galaxies.
Bio:
When we look up at the night sky, stars and galaxies appear almost eternal. However, neither stars nor galaxies existed at the beginning of the Universe. In history, the effect of gravitational force gradually developed concentrations of molecular gas, called molecular clouds, where a small portion of the gas converted into stars. The continuous formation of stars in the gas clouds built up galaxies. This process is still underway even in the current Universe. Indeed, we can find molecular clouds and ongoing star formation in the Milky Way galaxy and nearby galaxies. In this presentation, I will discuss the process of star formation, in particular, on the environment for star formation, the formation and evolution of molecular clouds in nearby galaxies.
Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Time: 1pm-2pm
Location: Special Collections Seminar Room, E-2340, second floor of the Melville Library
Library Administration: 631.632.7100
