Event

Knotty Games

  • Conférencier  Prof. Allison Henrich, Seattle University

  • Lieu

    Online

    LU

  • Thème(s)
    Mathématiques

Allison Henrich, Professor within the Department of Mathematics at Seattle University will give a lecture about “Knotty Games”.

This lecture is part of the “Multiplicities” initiative launched by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Luxembourg. Multiplicities is a broad audience seminar geared towards transversal topics whose aim is to highlight the diversity of mathematics and mathematicians. It is especially intended for PhD students, interested in widening their horizons and is supported by the PRIDE Grant “Geometry, Probability and their Synergies (GPS)”.

About the topic

Far too many people in this world are under the mistaken impression that math can’t be fun. The aim of much of my research with student and faculty collaborators, in part, is to provide yet another counterexample to this claim. Our work combines a delightfully visual mathematical subject, knot theory, with one of the most common sources of fun: games. Motivated by the fascinating work of Ayaka Shimizu on an unknotting operation called the region crossing change and research of Ryo Hanaki on unusual types of knot diagrams called pseudodiagrams, we have invented and explored several knot games. In this talk, we will play these games on knot diagrams, developing both our spatial intuition and our understanding of the structure of knots along the way.

About the speaker

Allison Henrich is a Professor in Mathematics at the University of Seattle. In addition to her research activities, she has also authored and edited several large audience math books. In 2015, she was honored to be a recipient of both the Mathematical Association of America’s Henry L. Alder Award for excellence in teaching and the Halmos-Ford Award for expository excellence. She won the Halmos-Ford Award a second time, in 2020. Allison helped to establish and is currently an editor of the American Mathematical Society’s Living Proof blog.