Speaker: Frank A. Farris

Date:  April 13th, 2022 (Thursday), 12:00-1pm  (Topeka, Kansas,  time)

Abstract:

A folk theorem says that “Everything is a superposition of waves.” By waves, we mean the familiar sine and cosine functions, with their pleasing undulations. In an engineering/physics class, we decompose sounds or shapes into their fundamental frequencies in order to predict how they move into the future. That’s very practical; those in search of pure mathematical beauty can exploit the flexibility of waves to make mathematical art. A Fourier series is just a sum of scaled sine and cosine functions and it turns out they’re enough to make any shape, roughly speaking. This talk tells how to make various kinds of patterns with Fourier series, like the lovely tangles in the image shown.

About the speaker:

Frank A. Farris is the Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Santa Clara University. A frequent participant in Bridges conferences, he co-organizes an informal group called Bay Area Art and Math (BAAM!). Farris was editor of Mathematics Magazine from 2001-05 and again in 2009, as well as other positions in the MAA. His book, Creating Symmetry: The Artful Mathematics of Wallpaper Patterns (Princeton, 2015), was awarded the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award in 2018.

 To the schedule of the seminar.