On Thursday, March 23, 2023,  the Department of Mathematics will welcome Dr. Alex V. Kontorovich as our 2022-23 Clanton Visiting Mathematician speaker.  There will be an afternoon colloquium talk and also a general audience talk in the evening.

Alex has degrees from Princeton (B.A.) and Colombia (Ph.D.), and is currently Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers. He was also recently the Distinguished Visiting Professor for the Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics. His research interests include Analytic Number Theory; Harmonic Analysis; Automorphic Forms, Representations, and L-functions; Hyperbolic Geometry and Spectral Theory.

Alex’s work involves analyzing geometrical spaces to develop theories about whole numbers.  His 2013 paper “From Apollonius to Zaremba: Local-Global Phenomena in Thin Orbits” won the Levi L. Conant prize in 2014.  Alex is also a musician; he is a saxophone and clarinet player steeped in klezmer, the musical genre that took root in the Ashkenazic Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.  he has toured with the Grammy-winning Klezmatics, co-founded the Klez Dispensers, and performed in venues from the Montreal International Jazz Festival to the Lincoln Center in Manhattan to the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow.

 

Afternoon Reception

3:00 p.m., Riley Hall 205

 

Afternoon Colloquium Talk

Title: The Shape of Math to Come

We will discuss some ongoing experiments that may have meaningful impact on what working in mathematics might look like in a decade (if not sooner).

4:00 p.m.
Johns Hall 101

 

Evening Presentation

Title: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Have you ever looked in amazement in a kaleidoscope, or been inside a polished elevator with mirrors on all sides? We will discuss the mathematics, both elementary and modern, underlying these and related objects.

8:00 p.m.
Shaw Hall, Younts Conference Center

 

 

 

Previous Clanton Speakers

  • 2021-2022:   Francis Su, Harvey Mudd College
  • 2019-2020:   Daniel Litt, University of Georgia
  • 2018-2019:   Gigliola Staffilani, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2017-2018:   Jill C. Pipher, Brown University
  • 2016-2017:   William Trotter, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • 2015-2016:   Richard Karp, University of California, Berkeley
  • 2014-2015:   Bryna Kra, Northwestern University
  • 2013-2014:   Avi Wigderson, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
  • 2012-2013:    Ken Ono, Emory University
  • 2011-2012:    William J. Cook, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • 2010-2011:    J. Michael Steele, University of Pennsylvania
  • 2009-2010:   Donald Saari, University of California, Irvine
  • 2008-2009:   Stephen Stigler, University of Chicago
  • 2007-2008:   Colin Clark, University of British Columbia
  • 2006-2007:   Barry Mazur, Harvard University
  • 2005-2006:   Peter Winkler, Dartmouth College
  • 2003-2004:  Jeffrey Weeks, Mathematician
  • 2002-2003:   Frank Morgan, Williams College
  • 2001-2002:    George Andrews, Pennsylvania State University
  • 2000-2001:    Kenneth Ribet, University of California, Berkeley
  • 1999-2000:   Jonathan Borwein, Simon Fraser University
  • 1998-1999:    Carolyn Gordon, Dartmouth College
  • 1997-1998:    Mary Ellen Rudin, University of Wisconsin
  • 1996-1997:    László Lovász, Yale University
  • 1995-1996:   Frederick Mosteller, Harvard University
  • 1994-1995:    Saunders MacLane, University of Chicago
  • 1993-1994:    Persi Diaconis, Harvard University
  • 1992-1993:    John H. Conway, Princeton University
  • 1991-1992:     Paul Halmos, Santa Clara University
  • 1990-1991:     Bradley Efron, Stanford University
  • 1989-1990:    Carl Pomerance, University of Georgia
  • 1988-1999:    Heinz-Otto Peitgen, University of Bremen
  • 1987-1988:    Ronald Graham, AT&T Bell Laboratories