Kilachand Person-in-Residence, Professor Sarah Hart
Photo credit: Alex Bell
Kilachand Honors College’s Person-In-Residence this Fall is the respected pure mathematician and gifted expositor of mathematics, Sarah Hart. Dr. Hart is Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London. In 2020 she was appointed the 33rd Gresham Professorship of Geometry, the oldest mathematics chair in the UK dating back to 1597. She is the first woman ever to hold the position. She is also President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. Her pure mathematics research is mainly in group theory, the main tool mathematicians use to understand symmetry. She is passionate about communicating mathematics and is a sought-after public speaker. She is particularly interested in the links between mathematics, culture and creativity: many of her public lectures are on these topics. Her book “Once Upon a Prime”, about mathematics and literature, will be published in 2023.
You can learn more about Professor Sarah Hart, including links to her lively Gresham lectures, here.
Browse the drop down boxes below to learn more about each event. The two lecture events Monday and Tuesday evening are open to the broader BU community, while the breakfast Tuesday morning is reserved for Kilachand Honors College students only.
A Mathematical Journey through Literature
Date & Time: Monday, November 7, 2022 @ 4:30pm.
Location: BU Law Auditorium (767 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215)
Event Description: In this lecture we’ll look at some of the many ways that mathematical ideas and structures can be found in literature. We’ll hear about fractals in Jurassic Park, the beautiful algebraic principles governing various forms of poetry, and a novel whose underlying structure uses a mathematical puzzle that took 200 years to solve. The goal is to show you that not only are mathematics and literature inextricably linked, but that understanding these links can enhance your enjoyment of both.
All literature has structure. Words make sentences, sentences make paragraphs, paragraphs make chapters. Poems may have lines, stanzas, a meter, rhyme scheme. Mathematics is the natural language of structure, and that’s the first way we see it in literature. You can use these patterns to write, in a short period of time, a thousand limericks or a thousand poems ! The second way is through the allusions and metaphors that writers use in fiction from fairy tales (three wishes, three bears) to Shakespeare (three witches). The third way that math appears is when it becomes part of the story – whether that’s mathematician characters or full-blown allegories of the fourth dimension.
If you want to read and dabble before we meet, just click HERE.
Attendance: You can register for this event in advance on Handshake here.
(For Kilachand Honors College Students) At the event, a QR will be posted for you to check-in. You must check-in to earn co-curricular attendance credit for this event.
Breakfast with Professor Sarah Hart
Date & Time: Tuesday, November 8, 2022 @ 8am
Location: BU Trustee Ballroom (1 Silber Way, 9th Floor, Boston, MA 02215)
Event Description:Join Professor Hart for breakfast where she will share more about her career path and host a Q&A with students.
This event is reserved for Kilachand Honors College student only.
Attendance: (For Kilachand Honors College Students)You can register for this event in advance on Handshake here. At the event, a QR will be posted for you to check-in. You must check-in to earn co-curricular attendance credit for this event.
The Mathematics of Perspective in Art
Date & Time: Tuesday, November 8, 2022 @ 5pm
Location: BU Law Auditorium (767 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215)
Event Description: One of the great achievements of Renaissance art is the discovery of the rules of perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi. But where do these rules come from, and how do they work? In this lecture we will explore the mathematics of perspective, and see how it has been used to create some of our greatest works of art. For example, one of the rules of perspective is that parallel lines that aren’t parallel to the picture plane meet in the vanishing point. Sometimes we have more than one vanishing point, if there are several sets of parallel lines, as in this painting Paris Street, Rainy Day, by Gustave Caillebotte.
Once we understand the rules of perspective, we can play with them to create fun effects, like pictures hidden within pictures. If you want to read more before we meet, just click HERE.
Attendance: You can register for this event in advance on Handshake here.
(For Kilachand Honors College Students)At the event, a QR will be posted for you to check-in. You must check-in to earn co-curricular attendance credit for this event.
