On Thursday, October 5, 2023, the Department of Mathematics welcomed Dr. Tadashi Tokieda as our 2023-24 Clanton Visiting Mathematician speaker. There was an afternoon colloquium talk and also a general audience talk in the evening.
Tadashi Tokieda is a professor of mathematics at Stanford. He grew up as a painter in Japan, became a classical philologist (not to be confused with philosopher) in France and, having earned a PhD in pure mathematics from Princeton, has been an applied mathematician in England and the US; all in all he has lived in 8 countries so far. He is also active in outreach, especially via the youtube channel Numberphile and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, and gave public lectures at the International Congress of Mathematicians 2018 and at the ICM 2022.
Perhaps Professor Tokieda’s greatest educational accomplishment is teaching subtle, yet deep, mathematical and physical principles through the use of simple “toys.” In fact, he has created or collected over 200 such toys, ranging from paper, paper clips, tea cups, rubber bands to more traditional toys like spinning tops and kendamas, for this purpose. Tokieda surprises his students, breaking their assumptions, by playing with these toys in creative ways to show something unexpected. He is a master at teaching through discovery.
Afternoon Reception
3:00-3:30, Mathematics Department Office Suite, Riley Hall 205
Afternoon Colloquium Talk
Title: Pure Mathematics as Applied Physics
Humans tend to be better at physics than at mathematics. After all, when an apple falls from a tree, there are more people who can catch it—they know physically how the apple moves—than people who can compute its trajectory from a differential equation. Applying physical ideas to discover and establish mathematical results is therefore natural, even if it has seldom been tried in the history of science. (The exceptions include Archimedes, some old Russian sources, a recent book by Mark Levi, as well as my articles and lectures.) A diversity of entertaining examples will be presented.
4:00 p.m.
Johns Hall 101
Evening Presentation
Title: A World from a Sheet of Paper
Starting from just a sheet of paper, by folding, stacking, crumpling, sometimes tearing, we shall explore a diversity of phenomena, from magic tricks and geometry through elasticity and the traditional Japanese art of origami to medical devices and an ‘h-principle’. Much of the show consists of table-top demonstrations, which you can try later with friends and family.
So, take a sheet of paper. . .
8:00 p.m.
Shaw Hall, Younts Conference Center