Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Binghamton University news:2017

Problem of the Week

2017-04-19T16:10:22-04:00

Problem of the Week

Starting from this semester, the Math Club will post a problem every Friday to encourage our undergraduate students to enjoy the beauty of mathematics outside of the classroom. Some of the problem do not require much mathematics background while some require certain basic training.

Answers should be sent to Jaiung Jun (jjun@math.binghamton.edu) by Thursday (a day prior to a new problem).

The first problem of the series is:

Circle A rolls one time around circle B whose radius is three times that of circle A. A letter A is drawn inside circle A. How many times will the letter A rotate? (Hint: It's not 3)

See future problems at Problem of the Week webpage.

The 2017 Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture

2017-06-05T22:35:07-04:00

The 2017 Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture

Prof. Konstantin Mischaikow from Rutgers University will give the annual Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture on Thursday, April 27, 2017. The lecture will be given in Fine Arts Building room 258 at 3:00 pm. It will be followed by a reception at 4:30 pm, in The President's Reception Room, Anderson Performing Center, Binghamton University. This reception is for the whole Binghamton Mathematics Community as well as for our visitors. A flyer of the event can be downloaded. The title and abstract, along with a list of previous speakers, can be found at the Hilton Memorial webpage.

Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture is an annual event in memory of Peter Hilton, 1923-2010, a member of the Binghamton Mathematics Department from 1982 until his death in November 2010. He was an internationally famous member of the mathematical community. His contributions included a major role in the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park during World War II, where he worked with Alan Turing, and important research contributions to topology, homological algebra, elementary number theory, combinatorics, and polyhedral geometry, as well as mathematics education at all levels. A collection of memoirs by people who knew Peter has been published in the December 2011 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Peter gave a talk to the department about his wartime codebreaking. You can watch it here.

Seventh Annual Upstate New York Number Theory Conference

2017-05-01T10:28:30-04:00

Seventh Annual Upstate New York Number Theory Conference

On the weekend of May 6 and 7, we are proud to host this year's Upstate New York Number Theory Conference, that will have talks on various aspects of Number Theory. For updates, please see the conference website at http://people.math.binghamton.edu/borisov/NTconf2017.html.

Zassenhaus Groups and Friends Conference

2017-05-01T10:32:10-04:00

Zassenhaus Groups and Friends Conference

The 2017 Zassenhaus Groups and Friends Conference will take place at Binghamton University on May 26-28, 2017. We are pleased to invite you to participate in this year's edition of the Zassenhaus Conference. The website for the conference is at: (https://sites.google.com/a/oswego.edu/zassenhaus/). Registration is online, at the Registration tab, and abstracts can be submitted through the same form. This year the Saturday evening banquet will be held at Quality Inn and Suites (4105 Vestal Parkway East, across from the university).

BUGCAT 2017 to be held in Binghamton

2017-09-20T12:53:20-04:00

BUGCAT 2017 to be held in Binghamton

The 10th Annual Binghamton University Graduate Conference in Algebra and Topology (BUGCAT) is to be held at Binghamton University, October 14th and 15th, 2017.

This year's featured keynotes are Profs. Eric Swenson from Brigham Young University, Tim Riley from Cornell University, and Zoran Sunic from Hofstra University.

Deadline for registration is October 6th and abstracts for talks should be also submitted by this day. Registration can be done through the conference website.

Visit the conference website and the conference Facebook Page, or e-mail gradconf@math.binghamton.edu for more information.

Passing of Prof. Tom Head

2017-11-14T15:17:23-04:00

Passing of Prof. Tom Head

With sadness we announce the passing on Nov. 10, 2017 of our colleague Tom Head. Tom received his PhD at the University of Kansas in 1962. His earlier work was in algebra. His textbook “Modules; a primer of structure theorems” was published in 1974. But Tom's most notable work was concerned with interactions between molecular biology and formal language theory. It was in this field that about half of his 86 research papers were written. In 2002 he received the annually given Yellow Tulip Award for his early contribution to DNA computing. In 2004 he was presented with the festschrift volume of papers: “Aspects of Biomolecular Computing.” Tom joined our department in 1988 and retired in 2005. He was a delightful colleague and he will be missed.