Prof. Tom LoFaro will present the first seminar talk of the year.
11:30-12:20 on Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Olin Hall, Room 320
Lunch will be served
In 1996 Rob Ghrist and Phil Holmes published a remarkable paper entitled “An ODE Whose Solutions Contain All Knots and Links” where they provided sufficient conditions for an ordinary differential equation in R3 to have periodic solutions exhibiting all knot types. This talk will provide an overview of this paper and take us on a journey from differential equations, through chaos and symbolic dynamics, and into topology with a brief visit into abstract algebra. Tie your shoes and join us for the trip.