Prof. Strogatz on a Mission for Math
Date
June 28, 2022 @ 7:30 pm
Venue
New York City, NY
Event Details
Join the Cornell Alumni Association of Westchester (CAAW) to hear Cornell Professor of Applied Mathematics Steven Strogatz describe his adventures in bringing math to the masses. Based on his experience writing an extremely popular series of articles for The New York Times and spending a year as a visiting professor at the Museum of Mathematics (“MoMathâ€) in NYC, Professor Strogatz will share insights about what worked and what didn’t in his quest to expand math literacy.
This Zoom event is geared for alumni, current Cornell students, and younger people as well. CAAW is planning a related family-friendly visit to the Museum of Mathematics in the fall.
EVENT DETAILS
Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Time: 7:30 p.m. ET
Location: Online (Zoom link will be sent)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell. How does he apply math? In numerous ways. He has written many professional papers, including one on the value of sharing taxis. You can start with his three-minute video for Cornell, where he described math as a tool to see hidden patterns in nature, highlighted by the coordination displayed by thousands of fireflies flashing in unison, which then was applied by Cornell engineers as a model for linking computers in a distributed system.
Turning to a non-academic audience, in 2010 he wrote a 15-part series on the elements of math for the New York Times. To his surprise — and his editor’s — each piece climbed the Times’ most-emailed list and elicited hundreds of appreciative comments.
The Times series was later adapted and expanded by Prof. Strogatz in a book for the general public, The Joy of X (2012). Moving his campaign to bring math to the public from print to a public space, Prof. Strogatz spent this past academic year as a Visiting Professor at MoMath.
