At the American Association for Advancement of Science's Annual Meeting and Science Innovation Exposition, in Philadelphia, 12-17th February 1998, there were several symposia of particular interest to mathematicians.
On Friday, 13th February, a full day geometry symposium entitled Exploring New Frontiers in Geometry: in the World Around Us and in Our Classrooms, co-chaired with David Henderson of Cornell University, was held.
Co-organizers Colm Mulcahy and David Henderson.
For the handouts distributed at the symposium, including an extensive bibliography, click here. Full details follow below.
At 2:30, between the morning and afternoon sessions of the geometry symposium, and following President Clinton's address, Dr. Tony DeRose of Pixar Animation Studios delivered a Topical Lecture entitled How Geometry Is Changing Hollywood. This included the east-coast premier of Geri's Game, Pixar's new short animation, which just won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film (23rd March 1998). For the handout distributed at the lecture, click here.
Dr. Tony DeRose of Pixar (and the model for Geri's hand!)
In the morning geometry session, "Geometry is Alive!'', the continually-evolving nature of geometry was highlighted, together with some cutting-edge applications to, and interactions with, science and technology. Extensive use was made of video as an aid in understanding and discovery. The speakers were:
Carolyn Gordon, Dartmouth College, "Can You Hear the Shape of a Drum?".
(This was due to be followed by Herbert Edelsbrunner, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, "Computing Organic Shapes on a Micro and a Macro Scale", but unfortunely Prof. Edelsbrunner was not able to attend the conference.)
Walter Whiteley, York University, "Old Questions - New Answers: Geometry for Computer Aided Design".
Delle Maxwell, Silicon Graphics, "Sharing the Mind's Eye: Computer Animation in Visualizing Geometry", and
Jeffrey Weeks, Canton, NY, "The Shape of Space".
In the afternoon session, "Long Live Geometry!", which focussed on vital pedagogical issues, the presenters shared their visions of how geometry should be taught in the coming decades, and why. The speakers were:
David Henderson, "Opening Students' Minds: Experiencing Non-Axiomatic Geometry in the Classroom"
James King, Univ. of Washington, "Reshaping School Geometry with Models and Software"
John H. Conway, Princeton, "The Wonders of Triangle Geometry"
Joseph Malkevitch, York College (CUNY), "New Geometry Helps Emerging Technologies from Robotics to HDTV", and, finally, Colm Mulcahy, Spelman College, "Exploring Frontiers in Geometry - Looking Back and Looking Forward".
Again, for the handouts distributed at the symposium, including an extensive
bibliography, click here.
(Advance information on all of the mathematics symposia offered at AAAS in
February 1998 appeared in MAA
Online.)
Sorry about the quality of the scanned images above! Clearly I should leave that task to the professionals the next time...
Back to Symposia.
(This is http://www.spelman.edu/~colm/aaas98g.html,
click here to return to main page).