Photo by Maria Stenzel Article by Olivia Fann As prospective math majors may have noticed, a certain department was notably absent from 2024 SURF opportunities. This year’s lineup of nine disciplines and 36 total labs participating in Amherst’s Summer Science Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) did not include any members of the math faculty, raising some…
By Bibi Hanselman a2 + b2 = c2. Whether it’s a distant high school memory or it has found its way into your physics homework somehow, there’s no denying that the Pythagorean theorem — timeless and profound, seared into all our memories — is practically a cultural touchstone in addition to a mathematical one. On…
By Ryogo Katahira On October 6, a man in his thirties wearing a hoodie and jeans entered a mechanics course classroom in the Science Center. He glanced at the blackboard with its simple energy diagrams while students and professors filed in. His demeanor was entirely casual, but he was the subject of the highly anticipated…
By Bibi Hanselman and Bryan Shi On October 16, the Science Center lobby buzzed with a lively atmosphere, packed with students enjoying snacks as they huddled around several of their peers and watched them pull off a variety of card tricks. But among these performers was the true star of the show: Dr. Arthur Benjamin,…
By Albina Jambulatova Muratovna Mathematics often leads us on a voyage into the unknown, where seemingly abstract ideas turn out to be glimpses into the underlying principles of our world. For example, the pine cone is a natural wonder that exhibits a mesmerizing spiral pattern. This spiral arrangement is a striking example of the Fibonacci…
Will DeGroot ’23 is a mathematics and computer science major. His thesis works toward answering a “big open question” within the field of abstract algebra called the Galois embedding problem. In collaboration with the Amherst Student. …
Tell us a bit about yourself; what life experiences influenced you to write a senior thesis? I’ve always liked math. I think my parents did a good job of encouraging that when I was young, and I got lucky and had a number of good math teachers who were very encouraging. I had a kind…
Katherine Moore is a visiting assistant professor of mathematics who came to Amherst this year. She received a Ph.D. in mathematics at Dartmouth College and was a postdoc at Wake Forest University. This fall, she is teaching courses in Calculus and Linear Algebra. What did you do before you started teaching here at Amherst, and…
The belief that math is difficult or even boring is commonplace, but Audrey Rosevear, the Math Club president, doesn’t think it has to be. Math Club was created as a haven where students can explore what math looks like in research and beyond in a stakes-free environment, as well as a forum to discuss mathematical…
Being in the class of 2021E, I started my mathematics thesis in Spring 2020, and actually concluded it in Fall 2020, officially handing it in on the 11th of November. It was under the supervision of two advisors: Professor Ivan Contreras, a close mentor whose work with a prior summer I hoped to continue in…