Department News
(Events are now listed on our calendar.)Anna Lysyanskaya '97 was recently named one of Technology Review's top innovators under 35 for 2007.
Erin Oliver (AC '08) finished among the top ten in the nation in this summer's US National Collegiate Mathematics Championships held in San Jose, CA, August 2007.
The Department is proud to share that Marjorie Senechal has received the Honored Professor Award. Here are President Christ's words from Smith College's 2007 Commencement ceremony:
"Since 1987, Smith College has presented the Honored Professor Award each year to a professor who has given long and distinguished service to the college.
"This year's Honored Professor is a scholar of exceptional energy and creativity, remarkable in the diversity of her intellectual interests and renowned for her wide-ranging accomplishments.
"A graduate of the University of Chicago, she received her masters and doctoral degrees from the Illinois Institute of Technology and joined the Smith faculty in 1966. Over the course of a prolific 40-year career, she became an internationally known mathematician, achieving distinction in such fields as algebraic number theory, geometry and its applications, mathematical crystallography and the history of science and technology.
"A dynamic teacher, she believes strongly in a student's ability to shape her own education. She conceives of mathematics as a large tent into which she welcomes many different people and ideas, believing that each of us has the capacity to understand the world better with the elegant vocabulary, concepts and beauty of mathematics.
"A Renaissance person in the truest sense of the phrase, she served as the founding director of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, a vigorous forum for inquiry across disciplines, in which students, faculty and visiting fellows work together on projects of broad academic scope and societal engagement. Through her visionary leadership, the Kahn Institute has galvanized and enriched the intellectual life of the college, sparking ideas and collaborations that have set many students on the path of passionate academic pursuit and graduate study.
"A cherished colleague among faculty, an inspiration to her students, this year's Honored Professor has made an unforgettable impression at Smith and on all who are fortunate enough to know and work with her. I ask Marjorie Senechal, the Louise Wolff Kahn Professor in Mathematics and History of Science and Technology, to come forward."
The department and the new Center for Women in Mathematics at Smith sponsor talks every Tuesday at noon. There is also an ongoing applied statistics lectures series. Both these series are open to all. Undergraduate students are encouraged to attend, and even give talks. We also have annual named lectures: CVC and UCVC, Dickinson and McCoy lectures.
Next
Coming soon
The department will be hosting a conference of Smith mathematicians (primarily alumnae), September 28–30.
Past talks
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
"What I've Been Working On"
Kris Tyler '09, Jordan Crouser '08, Ashley Hatfield '08, and Emma
Schlatter '10 speak about work of theirs.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Jim Henle, on how not to do applied mathematics
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Mary Murphy, on teaching math in Bolivia
Monday, April 16, 2007
Leonhard Euler's 300th Birthday Celebration
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
"Sketching the faces in the clouds - on blind men and elephants, community,
and creative mathematics"
Marjorie Batchelor '73
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
"Quantum Computing"
Peter Shor, M.I.T.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
"Error-correcting codes: Can you hear me now?"
Michael Bush, UMass
Wednesday, March 28
"Fourier Series: assembling sines"
Jim Callahan
Tuesday, March 13
Ted Cox, Syracuse University
Stochastic Spatial Processes
Thursday, March 8
Kobi Abayomi
"Correlation is not dependence"
Thursday, March 8
Kobi Abayomi
"Copula Based Independent Component Analysis, via mutual information"
Wednesday, March 7
Authentication and Encryption of RFID Tags
Kelsey Livingston
McCoy Lecture
Maximum Overhang
Peter Winkler, Dartmouth College
Tuesday, February 13
Surviving survival analysis: Its about time!
Amy Pace, Senior Biostatistician, Biogen Idec
Jim Henle presents research projects for the spring
Tuesday December 5
The King of Infinite Space
Siobhan Roberts (award-winning freelance writer based in Toronto)
Tuesday November 28th
Mike Albertson: three problems in search of a name
Tuesday November 14th
Statistical inference for familial disease clusters through matching
Dr. Daniel Zelterman Professor of Biostatistics, Yale University
Tuesday, October 31, Math Forum (Burton 3d floor), 3 PM
Chris Hardin: Agreement in Circular Societies
Oct 26-28 : Festival: Mathematics, the arts and other surprising connections.
Tuesday, October 3, Math Forum (Burton 3d floor)
Jim Callahan: Excuse me, ma'am; can you tell me the tide?"
September 26, Undergraduate Connecticut Valley Colloquium (UCVC)
Roger Howe, Yale University :The Pythagorean Theorem and the Nine-Point Circle
Wednesday September 20
The full Monte Carlo: a live performance
Dr. Xiao-Li Meng, Professor and Chair of Statistics, Harvard University
Tuesday, September 12:
Math on Stage
Talk by Marjorie Senechal (Smith College)