Public Lecture

Public Lecture as part of Spring Lecture Series 2025

How do we know if pictures work? The art and illustration of mathematics.

Presented by Edmund Harriss, University of Arkansas - About the Speaker

Abstract: Mathematics often captures the popular imagination with the amazing pictures in can produce, fractals, geometric symmetry and tilings reveal the power and the beauty of the subject in an accessible way. Yet they come with a question: What are you seeing? The mathematics in abstraction has been brought into the physical or visual world, but how has it been changed in the process? Just as we might discuss the difference between theory and practice the physical world often resists abstraction. Yet when we find clean routes into mathematics the results can be both practical and profound.